I’m a 21 year old male and I text all the damn time. I think one month I used 4600 texts. I pay $15 a month for unlimited text messages.
I text that much because with my friends, they’re either at school and I’m usually at work. Even if it were possible, I’d get in trouble if I sat talking on my cell phone all day, but I can get away with texting because I can type fast and do it without looking. I have full blown conversations.
“Threadshitting?” All I did was answer the question asked by the OP. The OP asked for opinions on whether texting was for adult males or for teenaged girls. I even used the acronym, “IMO.”
I see texting exactly as the OP does – a technically updated equivalent of passing notes in class. I can’t see any reason for adults of either gender to do it. Grown men sitting around texting each other banal, abbreviated inanities on cell phones all day does not strike me as either productive, or mature or particularly stimulating. I don’t see Hampshire objecting to mine and Shagnasty’s opinion, nor did he say that only wanted to hear from people who don’t think thumbing out “lol’s” on a cell phone is for little girls, so what’s the problem?
How does calling it “banal, abbreviated inanities” address either the fact that you are stereotyping all texting or denying the fact that there are some cases in which it is either more discreet or faster than any other method of communication?
My brother in law just sent me a copy of his cell phone bill displaying his 2,743 text messages sent last month. He’s 23.
I’m a 55 year old male and my bill doesn’t tell me how many SMS messages I send a month but it would be many more than the number of phonecalls I make. I have never been one to talk on the phone a lot and I love the terse nature of texting.
Just the facts ma’am.
My bro does. And most of the notes passing around in my classes, back between 5th and 12th grades, were between two guys. They were best friends, together by alphabetical order, and the teachers shuffled us to stick me in the middle, “that way those two won’t talk.” True, they didn’t talk. But Nava got a lot of exercise passing scraps of paper back and forth!
I don’t get the constant texting, but then, I don’t get the constant hanging on the phone some people do, either.
I’m a 40 year old woman. I hardly ever text.
37yo guy - I text my friends about meetings, dinner etc. If I want to have a convo, I chat.
28 yo guy - I text occasionally, mainly to sort out meeting arrangements with friends i.e. “You free to meet up next week?” “Yeah, weekend and tue/wed are good for me” etc. I used to text a lot more when I was younger but don’t do it so much now, usually I call or email friends to catch up and use text to sort out details of meeting or impart simple information/facts that someone needs to know.
I just checked my text inbox and have about 15 messages a month.
I admit I used to share the opinion that anything worth a text message was worth a telephone call, but if you just need to send a quick message without getting involved in a fifteen minute how’s-the-wife-and-kids conversation, they’re great. If you want to tell your whole softball team that practice has been moved to Sunday, sending a mass text message instead of calling everybody individually probably saves an hour.
I am 36 and male, and I text often. There is no other form of communication whereby you could be sitting in someone’s living room, seemingly listening to a conversation, and texting someone else about how boring it is sitting in someone’s living room seemingly listening to a conversation. If you were talking on the phone they would know you arent listening. If you were typing an email on a laptop they would know you arent listening. But if you type a sentence on your slide-out keyboard on your cellphone that takes a total of 10 seconds to send, and then say out loud, “Oh I know exactly what you mean!” they have no clue that you arent paying attention at all to them. Someone used the word to describe it: it is called “discreet”. That is what separates it from all other types of communication.
My ex got me started on the whole texting thing and I havent put it down since then. I definitely get my money’s worth on the unlimited texting with Sprint.
Oh, and to the person who can only type 30 words a minute in a text message: get a phone with a slide-out keyboard. Then you dont even have to look while you are typing, and you can type a lot faster as well.
It’s a culture thing. Everyone I know in the UK and Ireland texts - no gender divide.
My £10 plan gives me 300 free texts a month, and 300 free minutes. I never use more than about 30 spoken mins in any given month, but usually use more than 200 text messages. 40-year-old male.
No objection at all. In fact I was looking for more opinions like these so I could confirm I wasn’t alone in my opinion that texting is an ass-backwards form of communication.
If you think texting is faster because it sidesteps the unneccesary phone chatter pleasantries well then learn how to make a phone call without the pleasantries.
“Hello?”
“Bob, it’s Jim. You going to the game tonight?”
“Yep. I’ll be there at 7.”
“Cool. See ya there. Later.”
That phone call takes less than 1.5 seconds to make. Texting the same thing takes 3 back and forth text exchanges. Insane.
Aww, BS that phone call takes less than 1.5 seconds. It usually takes way more than 1.5 seconds just for the other guy to pick up the phone. That you have to necessarily pick a back-and-forth conversation to compare it to texting (which for this example would still be fairly effective, not much less so than a phone call, if at all) tells me you aren’t really reading any of the other examples that people are trying to give.
I still think if you are busy, or driving, or in a noisy place, or countless other situations, it is way better to get a short, readable message on your phone. Having it ring is an interruption. Even if you don’t answer it, you have to make a conscious decision to ignore it. You don’t know what the person wants to say so you have to think about whether you are going to pick it up or not. If you don’t, and they leave a voicemail, you have to then call your voicemail and listen to a message which may not be heard clearly sometimes. Or if they are leaving a phone number or address, you have to then get a pen and paper and then replay the message and then write it down. Text message–you know exactly what he wants to say and you get the info immediately, it gets stored for you, and the person texting knows you are getting the info pretty much immediately and they don’t have to have a synchronous call with you. They fire and forget. You can text back or not at your leisure.
Well, anyway, this conversation is pretty pointless, it doesn’t seem like anyone wants to really understand it, but would rather just read the responses that agree with their existing notions, and ignore the rest. So whatever.
I’ve never texted and don’t imagine I’ll ever feel compelled to do so. Sorry… just zero interest.
Yes - that call takes 1.5 seconds, but 95% of calls take a lot longer than that, even when you know someone is calling and are intending to keep it short. Unless I’m meeting someone and am calling them to ask “where are you standing? I can’t see you” because it’s a crowded area, there is always some chat involved. Text is much better and the kind of exchange you allude to.
I see no reason to call either. People used to get along just fine without having to call or text each other 500 times a day. Maybe it’s a generational thing. In my day, guys did not feel the need to be in constant contact with their BFF’s during the day.
Sorry, I just don’t agree. Things I see people text about can be completed via a regular phone call much, much quicker.
Give me any example of a text conversation exchange and it can be covered by voice in a fraction of the time.
You realize, in a way, you’re texting us right now, right? 
Yeah, and if we were having the same conversation voice-to-voice it would have been done and over sometime yesterday.