Texting

Rosa Chavez
December 3rd 2012
English
Dr. L. Bongiovanni

Texting Research paper

As technology advanced, text messaging was designed as a quick and quirky way to speak to one another without actually speaking. Text messaging has become very popular in recent years, especially amongst teenagers and young adults but the outcome of this advancement is not all positive. Although texting makes communication faster and easier there are many problems that derive from texting alone. Texting and driving, cheating on tests, negative effects on social interaction and even suicide are some of the major issues caused by texts. Texting has become something big and beyond our control that is destroying the lives of many teens and young adults. Over 5,000 teens are killed yearly because of texting; this is a huge rate in death for something as simple and convenient as a text.
For many parents and teens texting can be a blessing and a curse. Most parents give their teens cellphones to be able to communicate easier with each other while at the same time giving them a little more freedom. However some teens do not like how connected they are with their parents with cellphones. At first parents seem to be thankful but over time will try to restrict how much time their child spends on their cellphone texting has become the preferred way to communicate with one another between many teenagers and their friends. It’s also becoming very common for children young and younger years of age to have cell phones and communicate with friends via texting instead of face-to-face conversation. A majority of teens ages 12-17, will text once a day, smaller percentages actually have phone conversations and even fewer have face-to-face conversations.
In an article titled “Negative Aspects of Text Messaging” by Cesar Marquez, he comments about the advancement in saying, Technology has improved with the introduction of products like the Apple iPhone and the Blackberry...In June 2008 75 billion text messages were sent in the U.S compared with just 7.2 billion in June 2005.” Text messaging plans are the highest selling and most demanding of all the plans in every phone company across the nation. Sixty percent of all communication is done via texting. Many teens and young adults immediately feel lost and anxious if phone service were to be cut off or even if they are away from their phone for too long. Psychologist Dania Diaz said that “text messaging is dangerous, not only does it ruin social interaction between humans, writing skills and expression. Everything becomes so impersonal and simple.” When texting you don’t have to worry about what you’re going to say; feeling cannot be expressed over a text message. Anger can be confused for a joke and there is a miscommunication between parties.
Psychologist Cecilia Holguin reports on the effects of texting on another person’s communications skills. “It does seem people are more comfortable text messaging rather than actually talking with another human…There is no awkwardness or vocal response involved when texting. Young people could virtually say anything through texts and don’t have to commit to engaging into the effects through a vocal conversation.” College engineer Darko Marquez admits that he text rather then talk on the phone, “The thing I like the most about texting is that unlike the phone where you have to sit and concentrate into a long, boring conversation with one person….With texting, you can be watching TV, surfing the web, playing videogames, and talking to as much people as you want all at once.” This proves how lazy we’ve become since the introduction of text messaging. We don’t even want to have a phone-to-phone conversation because we feel it’s inconvenient.
One of the main problems with texting is how easy it is to communicate within a classroom of students. Communications professor Frank Perez says, “Texting is a frustrating part about college students nowadays. I rarely give a full lecture without having to remind students not to be text messaging while I am speaking. If I catch someone texting, I will give them a warning and the second time I catch them, they must leave the classroom.” College students who frequently text in class have a difficult time paying attention and have a poor learning outcome. As college students we may believe that we are capable of multitasking during class, but the reality is that we aren’t.
Texting affects the way we pay attention in class and it also effects us verbally. With all the acronyms we invent and how we shorten our words we use that in essays we write and even when we verbally speak to another. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project by the Pew Research Center “50 percent of teens admit they often make grammatical and capitalization mistakes in their school work due to including texting shortcuts in their papers.” People who text often are less likely to accept new words than people who read more traditional print media. One study observed that “Generation txt” students in grades 6th-8th had an increase in “text speaking” and decrease in grammar assessments. Ninety-five percent of teens and young adults from the ages 18- 24 years- old own a cell phone, and 97 percent of them text on a daily basis, sending about 109.5 texts a day. It can be concluded that in present day, most teens and young adults are addicted to texting. Many teachers feel that texting is distracting and allows students to cheat. An article by Forbes Magazine comments, “Stuyvesant’s student newspaper, The Spectator, conducted a survey of 2045 students in March of 2012, 80% said they had cheated”. Their method of cheating was simple, “sending answers via text, posting answers to Facebook, Googling facts on a smart phone, and snapping a photo of test questions”. Students are failing to see that this will affect them in the future because they are too preoccupied with getting the answers that they don’t pay attention anymore. They are so worried about answering a text in time that they are depriving themselves of education. We can barley multitask, so its impossible to text and apply the amount of attention needed to understand a lecture.
One of the major reasons texting is considered a “curse” is because people are being distracted while performing a dangerous and daily task, driving. The rate of accidents caused by texting and driving is increasing. As a result, anti-phone laws have been created around the country. Despite this, texting and driving has still gotten worse in recent years. Forbes recently released an article that stated, “In 2010 3,092 people were killed in crashes involving a distracted driver and an estimated additional 416,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes involving a distracted driver.” A 2009 Car and Driver study found that texting is even more dangerous than drunk driving. “Texting is such a social norm we don’t even realize that we text as often as we do. The fact that texting and driving is worse then drunk driving is something severe, but we can’t only blame teens for texting and driving”. In a recent survey by Nationwide Insurance 1,503 drivers found that almost 40% of those respondents, from 16 to 30 years old, said they text while driver.” Another serious problem with texting is how many deaths and serious injuries occur from people who walk into traffic. People are so into their conversation that they don’t even bother to look up with they are walking, they constantly bump into people or objects and many people have even had a close encounter with death.
Information spreads too quickly, both good and bad news. It can bring harm to many pre-teens with harmful gossip and inappropriate photos. An interview on “The Today Show”, mother of 13-year-old Hope Witsell, Donna Witsell talks about how she found her daughter dead. Hope Witsell attended Shields Middle School, where she used a cell phone and photo messaged a nude picture to a boy in the spring. Since then, the picture went around to several other people and she became a victim of bullying and spiteful teasing. In early September the abuse became too much for Hope to handle and she hung herself in her bedroom. Donna had no idea of the abuse until 3 day prior to her daughter suicide. A similar incident occurred with 18-year old Jesse Logan. Jesse had “sexted” nude photos of herself to her then boyfriend who sent the photos to various high school girls after their break-up. The girls then began to torment her, calling her a “slut” and a “whore”. Jesse was on Cincinnati television station to tell her story so that other girls wouldn’t make the mistake she did. However, only two months after in May 2008 she hung herself in her bedroom. Once again her mother was oblivious to the teens problems. Her mother Cynthia found out about the problem too late and wasn’t able to help her only daughter as she wanted too.
Texting has become an uncontrollably growing phenomenon that has become one our more serious issues; it has brought more negative into our world than positive. We see from the information researched above that text messaging is an addiction for many; from texting and driving to texting during class and much more this addiction has gotten so bad that it is raising death rates passed the regular freak accidents. Many pre-teens kill themselves because of bullying due to a foul text messages sent to them. As a whole, we cant only blame texting as being the main issue here. Of course, it’s the reason for many deaths but the people that are sending those texts are more to blame. Being that we are the people texting, we should be smarter then to sext, text while driving, walking and texting and not paying attention in class simply because we can use our smartphone to cheat during a test. We should be able to use texting as an easy and faster way of communication when needed but still be able to hold a successful and meaningful conversation face-to-face.

Bibliography 1. "Text Messaging in Class May Affect College Students ' Learning." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 04 Apr. 2012. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. 2. "Mom Talks about Suicide of Daughter Who Texted Topless Photo." TBO.com. N.p., 2 Dec. 2009. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. 3. "Her Teen Committed Suicide over sexting." TODAY.com. N.p., 6 Mar. 2009. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. 4. "Negative Aspects of Text Messaging." Borderzine Negative Aspects of Text Messaging Comments. N.p., 21 Oct. 2009. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. 5. "Anti-Social Networking: How Do Texting and Social Media Affect Our Children? A Panel Discussion by CSC Clinicians at the Nightingale-Bamford School | AboutOurKids.org." Anti-Social Networking: A Panel Discussion by CSC Clinicians at the Nightingale-Bamford School. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.

Bibliography: 1. "Text Messaging in Class May Affect College Students ' Learning." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 04 Apr. 2012. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. 2. "Mom Talks about Suicide of Daughter Who Texted Topless Photo." TBO.com. N.p., 2 Dec. 2009. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. 3. "Her Teen Committed Suicide over sexting." TODAY.com. N.p., 6 Mar. 2009. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. 4. "Negative Aspects of Text Messaging." Borderzine Negative Aspects of Text Messaging Comments. N.p., 21 Oct. 2009. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. 5. "Anti-Social Networking: How Do Texting and Social Media Affect Our Children? A Panel Discussion by CSC Clinicians at the Nightingale-Bamford School | AboutOurKids.org." Anti-Social Networking: A Panel Discussion by CSC Clinicians at the Nightingale-Bamford School. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.