Texting Is Harmful

Texting is Harmful

Since the first text message, sent on December 3, 1992 (Gayomali, 2012), texting has skyrocket surpassing phone calls. Texting increased so dramatically that even politicians are using texting to reach out to mobile subscribers. In 2008, the Barack Obama Campaign reached out to nearly 2.9 million US mobile subscribers, which is 52% of the national’s subscribers (Obama’s V.P, 2008). Texting has been one of people’s mainstreams of communication with friends, families, and co-workers. Although texting is on the rise, texting affects people.

Texting affects our lives by causing distractions at school, work, home, and in the car. These distractions may or may not be harmful, but a distraction is a distraction. For example, texting while driving is extremely dangerous. Statistics from the Edgar Snyder & Associates showed that in 2010 (Statistics on Texting, 2012), 3,267 people were killed and 416,000 were injured in distracted driving accidents. To help decrease the number of deaths and injuries, Wisconsin has made texting and driving illegal. Not only is texting a distraction on the road, texting is a distraction to students. There are more and more students, as young as middle school, with cell phones. Although cell phones are not allowed in classrooms for middle and high school students, texting happens in between classes. Texting causes distractions in classroom focus, class attendance, and class assignments.

Texting hides nonverbal behaviors. We don’t know if they are depressed, excited, or upset. It’s difficult to see what the other person’s real intention is. A recent text conversation with a girlfriend is a prime example of this. The conversation started out with “lets hang out tonight at your place” from me to her. She, of course, said “yes.” Later in the conversation, she “complained” about often people come over just to drink at her place. I, as you can image, was quite offended. Because I couldn’t see her body language, I assumed she was giving me a hint that she didn’t want to hang out. Text messages do not show the receiver his or her real intentions.

Texting affects our written communication. There are hundreds of texts shorthand: cul8r, plz, bbfn, lol, brb, wtf, omg, a2d. Many of which I personally did not know existed; I mean, who knew “bbfn” means “bye bye for now” or “a2d” means “agree to disagree?” According to Shravan Goli:

Ultimately, in the world of business and in the world they will live in, in terms of their jobs and professional lives, students will need good, solid reading and writing skills. I’m a little worried about where we are in America with literacy levels dropping. Are these [electronic devices] helping us, or making it worse? I think they may be going the other way and making it worse. (Tomaszewski, 2011)