Assignment 4-1

The Text Messaging Craze
Here is another topic I just don’t get. I personally would much rather talk to someone on the phone or in person than type them a message to send via cell phone. But apparently I am the odd person in today’s society. I recently had a teacher at a high school tell me that not only the students are texting but also the staff. He watched two staff members texting each other back and forth when they were sitting no more than ten feet from each other. He said he wanted to smack them and tell them to try communicating verbally.
I was against getting my fourteen year old daughter a cell phone until she was at least sixteen. My parents got her one for Christmas this year against my knowledge and I agreed to let her keep it if she was responsible in its use. I thought she was going to cry when I told her there was no way I was going to pay for text service. “But Dad, that is how everyone communicates now”, was her response. As if people don’t have enough of a problem with speaking in public and to others, now this!
Well, you know I love statistics so here we go. As of December 2006, 18.5 billion text messages are sent every month and that number has grown by 250% each year for the last two years. As of March 2007, 79% of the U.S. population owns a cellular phone. Experts are projecting text use to jump to 80 billion texts per month in 2008. The average age of a text user is surprisingly 38 years old. (Cell Signs, 2007) I expected a much younger group of people on this one.


Reference:
Cell Signs Inc. (2007), Text message statistics. Retrieved February 3, 2008 from the website http://www.cellsigns.com/industry.shtml.