The Power, The Convenience, and The Pitfalls of Texting..............Wow! All that over a bunch of words, letters, and characters? Well I believe all three are true.
Texting is fast becoming the number one form of communication for people under the age of 40, and the "older generation" (myself included) are falling in line. According to the Pew Internet Research Center 73% of adult cell phone owners use the function at least occasionally.
I personally have been using texting for a number of years, in the beginning (and to some extent now) it was not my preference but an action born of necessity. My eldest child was driving a truck in the oilfield and the area he was working in had "spotty at best" cell service. We would try to talk on the phone and one phone call would turn into 5 or 6 calls with him trying to find another hill to get service from. We often resorted to texting just to get an uninterrupted message across and save both of us a lot of frustration! Spotty service combined with his working strange/odd hours made this our preferred means of communication.
I viewed this means of communication on two levels............If his phone was in his hand and he wasn't busy - we had a "conversation"; if he was busy or sleeping I "left him a note" that he could answer when he could.
Personally I view all texting in that fashion today. Whether I am asking a question, reminding someone, sharing something that happened, or just want to say hi..............in my mind I am passing a note to be answered when the person is able to read it.
What about when they DON'T answer? Well I deal with that also, sometimes better than others..........my reaction depends on WHO I am texting, lol, and to some extent WHAT and WHEN I am texting.
If I text my daughter during the day and she doesn't answer I figure that she is working...........if I don't get an answer in 24 hours then I am not happy because I know, that as a norm, she lives with that phone in her hand and that she is just ignoring what I am saying. My eldest son answers texts in his own sweet time, no matter WHO they are from while my youngest son will answer within minutes no matter what the question or message is!
Pitfalls in texting occur often. We all shudder at the horror stories of "auto-correct" that have us stuttering and stammering after we hit SEND and realize what we have just typed. Another pitfall is delay, my daughter has been bailed out more than once when we have compared phone screens to see either a "lack" of a message OR "times" - Honest to Pete - she sent me a message one time that took SIX hours to reach my phone and she was less than a mile away when she sent it!
Response or the lack of response is a major pitfall.........but do you respond to everything? Sorry I don't have the answer for that, it is a judgement call on the part of part of the receiver. Do I think you need to respond to every LOL or Smiley face? Probably not, that puts you in the old trap of "you hang up first - no you hang up first" Somebody has to hang up the "phone". BUT you have to be sensitive enough to know that the other person would like some acknowledgement that their "note" has been read.
GOOD Communication requires several things to happen, whether it is Verbal or Non Verbal. A sender sends out a message, the message is received - the receiver then has to send a message BACK to the original sender so that they know it has been received.
So unless "the teacher takes the note up" aka it is lost in cyberspace, open the note - read it and let the other person know that you got it. You may never fully understand the importance of the note they left you but just remember they THOUGHT it was important enough to leave for you.
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