Get Herald RSSText messaging is succinct. Text messaging is fun. Text messaging is discreet (sort of). Text messaging teaches you new and exciting ways to spell even the shortest words. Yes, text messaging has its place, but lately, it has been overstepping its boundaries. Here are seven reasons why texting is, in fact, a tool of Satan:
1) It's rude to your friends. Nothing tells someone that you don't want to talk to them like talking to someone else at the same time. If you were in the middle of a conversation with a friend and someone called you to chat, you would tell him to call you back later, and yet somehow it's different for texting. Have you ever tried to talk to someone while they were texting? It's like trying to … um … yeah … sorry, what were you saying?
2) It's rude to your professors. I can't even count how many people I've seen texting in the front row of a lecture. Not that hiding your sin is any better. Your professors are smart. They have Ph.D.s and they're eminent in their fields. Do you sincerely believe that they don't know what you're doing when you glance under the desk every 15 seconds and wiggle your thumbs? They might have teenage kids who text under the dinner table. They may even do the same thing with their BlackBerries. If you want to talk to your friend about the guy you hooked up with last night, don't come to class.
3) You don't know with whom you are communicating. Admittedly, this could apply to any sort of electronic interaction, but when you are operating with a very small number of characters and a vernacular of banalities, it's a lot easier to convince someone that you are not who you are.
A few weeks ago, for instance, a friend of mine received a text message from a number with her hometown area code that she didn't recognize. The person on the other end thought she was someone named Roger. She had an entire conversation with him where she found out his name, his new girlfriend's name, his new girlfriend's MySpace page, the name of a mutual friend, what he was planning on doing the next day and so on. Luckily, she was not interested in doing anything with this information, but in this age of decreased privacy, who needs one more risk?
4) It makes you walk into things. This one is pretty self-explanatory. When you're looking down and you should be looking up, you walk into things.
5) It gave rise to the nauseating Twitter. For those cavemen among you, Twitter is a service that allows you to broadcast everything you think to a list of people. Is there anything more narcissistic than being convinced that other people want to know what you're thinking and doing (in 140 characters or fewer) at any hour of the day? And is there anything more pathetic than wanting to know what other people are thinking and doing at any hour of the day?
6) It makes you dumb. For whatever reason, you're allowed to take liberties with spelling and grammar that were considered hopelessly immature when you used them over AIM in eighth grade. It also encourages the placement of "lol" at the end of every phrase, even when there is nothing particularly funny being said. Before we know it "Watsup lol?" will be replaced by "Im at da hozpital and in desperate need of a new organ, lolz."
7) It can kill you. In a disturbing recent example investigators are trying to determine if text messaging caused the recent deadly commuter train crash in California. The engineer was known to text with teenager train enthusiasts while on the job, and one claimed to have received a text from him one minute before the crash.
As any high schooler can tell you, texting among teenage drivers is widespread. This practice leads to tragedies like the 2007 car accident outside Rochester, N.Y., that killed five teenage girls because, authorities suspect, the driver was texting.
I know this is a losing battle, since Americans now use their phones for texting more often than for calling. All the same, please remember that even though we are all accomplished 21st-century multi-taskers, there's a limit to how much the brain can handle.
When you're looking down at your phone, trying to decipher the meaning of "omg im so adctd2txt ruf2t plz ans w nething lolz," it is next to impossible to listen to a professor, talk to a friend or not walk into a stop sign. For your safety and my sanity, please try to remember this next time your phone beeps with joy.
Sarah Rosenthal '11 wants you damn kids to get off her lawn.
