What's The Appeal Of Text Messaging?

Word Count:
416

Summary:
It seems that most people over the age of 30 never use text messaging, and don’t understand why it appeals to the younger crowd. Conversely, it seems that the under 20 age group would be just fine if their phone didn’t even make calls as long as it sent text messages.

And then there’s the group in the middle - The kids who grew up when instant messaging online was still in its infancy stages, but still tend to be fairly tech savvy. Some of them use text messaging almost ex...


Keywords:
cell phones, messaging, texting, mms, text, message, teens


Article Body:
It seems that most people over the age of 30 never use text messaging, and don’t understand why it appeals to the younger crowd. Conversely, it seems that the under 20 age group would be just fine if their phone didn’t even make calls as long as it sent text messages.

And then there’s the group in the middle - The kids who grew up when instant messaging online was still in its infancy stages, but still tend to be fairly tech savvy. Some of them use text messaging almost exclusively while others don’t even know the feature is on there phone.

I’m in the middle group, age 25. I’m a big technology fan so I’ve had phones that have had text messaging capability since 2000. However, I never used the feature until 2006. Most of my friends still used their cells phones for making phone calls.

However, while traveling this spring to visit a friend I needed to tell him which airline I was coming in on so he could pick me up. I had already left for the airport so I couldn’t just email him the information, and it was 5:00am in the morning where he was so I didn’t want to call and wake him. I decided this would be a good opportunity to venture into the world of text messaging. I started looking into my menus to see how to send a text message. Then once I had figured out, I fumbled around trying to type the message, but I got it sent.

I arrived at the airport and he was there like he was supposed to be. He got my message. I didn’t wake him up, so I had achieved my goal.

I’ve started using the text message feature of my phone more frequently to tell friends where we’re meeting to go out or where to show up for sports leagues I’m in. It’s really convenient for sending a message when you don’t really need to spend time with your typical, “Hi, how are you? Blah blah blah. Okay, now I can finally get to what I actually wanted to say.”

I can’t foresee myself ever getting to the point where I only text message people, however, I find myself increasingly using it when I’m short on time or even if I don’t feel like talking on the phone but still need to get a message to that person.