In my case, 90% of conversations involve either my mother, whose record stands at retelling the same conversation six times during a single phone call, or agents who call me in English (generally while I am in not in an English-speaking environment, so my ears are getting messages in two languages at the same time, which is a bitch of an interference) and who way too often ask whether I speak English or, like today, whether I have ever worked abroad, after we’ve spent 20+ minutes speaking in English about my experiences working mostly-abroad.
Not only does the second kind take a lot longer than asking for the same information in an email (or just, you know, reading my CV… the one in my file…), but it makes my head ache even worse than the first. Nowadays when my phone rings with Cabaret’s Money (Mom’s ring) or shows a foreign number (agent) I get a feeling of dread that would make a black-plague era fire and brimstone preacher proud.
Conversations with reasonable people who know my schedule is complicated are in writing: either text or email.
And for the teens, as someone already said, what texting replaces is IM. Which was a fancier-looking /talk for those of us who are old and geeky… it’s just gone full-circle
I wish our cell phone plan didn’t charge for texting. Maybe then I could convince Mr. Neville to do that instead of calling for things like saying we’re headed home. When he does this, he either likes to or feels obligated to chat about his day and my day. This drives me crazy. It’s rare that I want to chat about my day. I just want to get the necessary information, that he is on his way home, with no chitchat. If we must chat about his day, I’d rather do it when we’re both at home.
He and his family talk about their work a great deal. I do not understand why anyone would want to do this, unless there’s a good stupid-coworker story to tell. I miss working in a classified environment- that gave me a great excuse to give a few generalities and change the subject when anyone tried to ask me about my work.
I can’t imagine carrying a phone around with me and not having it on. Sure, smart phones need to be charged more often than non-smart-phones, but even the worst of them can stay on for a typical person’s day. I’m sure there are some people who are not near a place to charge them occasionally, but I gotta think that most people spend at least part of their day in a car or in a building, both of which offer places to charge a phone. And I know with my iPhone, at least, it can stay on all day without needed a charge, assuming “normal” use - ie, the occasional phone call, listening to music, etc.
Another reason why texting is more convenient than phone calls: in a phone call, there’s certain chit-chat and etiquette that take up time. Even the very quickest calls require a “Hi, how you doing?” at the beginning and “Bye, see you soon!” kinda thing at the end. Most of the time the social chit-chat is even longer. And as Nava and Anne Neville point out, with some people there is no such thing as a quick call.
Texts are quick, concise, and to the point. Can they go on longer? Sure, but they don’t have to, and there is no rudeness associated with being direct and to-the-point on a text as opposed to a phone call. Can you imagine calling someone and saying nothing but “Hey, remember to pick up milk” then hanging up?
I just thought of another reason to SMS instead of e-mail … I can SMS anyone I’ve ever chatted with on the phone, but I can only e-mail people if I’ve actually made some additional effort to get their address. Which, in the case of people like my son’s friends, I’m not going to do. It’s one thing to send an SMS to my son’s buddy when I know they are hanging out together to say “CairoSon’s phone is out of juice, can you please tell him to take the late bus instead of waiting for me at the school entrance?” But it strikes me as a bit oogie to be in e-mail contact with a bunch of 14-year-old boys.
I am a management level IT professional. I have and use an iPhone. Before that I had a Windows phone for 3 years.
I have never sent or received a text in my life. I would have to look up even how to do it. But then my phone is set up with my office email, so I can instantly contact anyone I work with or home any time I want.
There may be some situation where texting would be effective and convenient for me but I haven’t needed it in four years so I don’t see me adopting it any time soon.
First of all, I HATE HATE HATE when I go to a party, or out to dinner, or really any in-person socializing with a group of friends, and instead of talking to the person in front of you they pull out their phones and start texting away. IMHO the only good reason to be texting when you’re getting together with a friend in person is if there’s an emergency.
Now that that’s out of the way, these are the good reasons I can think of for texting off the top of my head:
(1) If you’re in a public place, texting does not disturb the peace nearly as much as talking on the phone does.
(2) If you have friends with heavy accents, texting is a much more efficient means of communication.
(3) Texting is handy if you need to know a specific piece of information, but are hanging out with someone in person – talking on the phone when you’re with someone else is more awkward because it’s harder to pay attention to two people at once that way.
(4) Sometimes if I call someone and it goes to voicemail, I’ll text rather than leave a VM because with most phones, it’s much easier to check texts than to check voicemail messages.
I don’t have a smartphone and no plans to get one. I have no interest in paying their fees. I have a TracFone that has texting enabled, it’s like a knockoff of a smartphone. It has Internet but i wouldn’t really trust it; it sucks.
I got the phone occasionally because the alternatives with my brother were either a 30 minute conversation or a succession of quick texts. I also think the phone is stupid and hate talking on it. As I said in a previous thread, I’m a very social person and the phone is actually not, even if you think so. It’s got no facial cues or body language, it’s often hard to hear, you often can’t talk quietly, everyone has to hear, etc., etc.
Now I just love texting because of the ease. Normal conversation:
“Hi!”
“Hi!”
“Sorry to bother you at work, but listen, I’m going to the grocery store, do you need anything?”
“Um…let me think.” (maybe lists some things"
“Ok, that’s all I called for! Love you! Bye!”
“Bye!”
Text: “going to grocer’s around 1 pm, do you need anything?”
Then the response comes, with time to think about it, and meanwhile much less time is wasted.
I’m not sure what’s so difficult about it. I use all three: phone, text, e-mail. I just don’t have access to e-mail when I’m out and about.
1> I don’t have email on my phone, it does voice calls and texts. I can’t email anything unless I’m at home in front of my computer. I have no idea if any of my friends are in the habit of checking email on their phones, either.
2> Trying to meet up with someone, in real time, in a noisy environment, or somewhere were cell service is spotty. As already pointed out, a text only needs a clear second to go through, a call may constantly cut out or drop and take much longer to relay the same info. Also, if I can’t hear you above the crowd/music/whatever, calling you won’t do me any good in that case either. (I also really hate conversations that consist largely of people yelling WHAT?!? back and forth.)
3> In cases where all I need is to relay some information that doesn’t require a reply. e.g. “Had to wait 30 minutes for a @#$@# bus, will be late but there ASAP.”
4> Any conversation which won’t require more than a single exchange, e.g. my SO at the store asking me what kind of [whatever] to get again? I’ll text the answer instead of phoning because I don’t think I’ll save any time one way or the other. Plus I’m more likely to meet my daytime minute limit than my text limit, and I’d rather not pay extra on my phone bill later.
If a conversation starts to go into 3 or more rounds of back-and-forth, I’ll just dial the phone and talk to them. Or in one case, I texted “Can you phone right now?” because he started this lengthy conversation with me over text, and I couldn’t figure out why he was texting instead of calling. (He did call me, and I never got an answer to that question.)
I didn’t text until I had a girlfriend who texted. That’s the answer for a lot of people, I’m afraid: you use a medium because it’s what others use. Also, it’s quiet, so you can send a text without (egregiously) disturbing those around you.
That said, as smartphones become more ubiquitous, I can see texts per se going the way of the telegram as people just use email.
Texting is great when you want to communicate something briefly to someone without actually having a conversation with them. Think of the potential. I’m talking mothers and mothers-in-law, here. If I don’t feel like talking to my Mom for an hour, I’ll text her a few highlights of my week and call later when I feel like it.
This is why it was awesome when my mom started using email (15 years ago).
I have a smartphone but text only rarely. Usually, it’s to tell my parents about something cute one of the grandkids just did (because phoning would embarrass them). Sometimes, it’s to communicate things like a serial number or phone number without the sender not getting it down right.
I work on a phone 40 hours a week. Talking on the phone is the last thing I feel like doing after 8 hours of talking on the phone.
Various family members of mine have bad phone manners. My mom and aunt will gab on for ages no matter how hard you try to get away. And I’ve got stuff to do, ok! Anyway, I hate feeling like a prisoner because I keep trying to end the conversation and the person on the other end won’t stop talking. So that’s a big component of my phone avoidance.
Texting is also faster, because phone calls also require the exchange of pleasantries before business can be discussed. Oh hi, how are you? I’m good, how are the kids? etc. When I want to know something by text, I can just send off the question. Calls are also harder to stop than texts. When you’re done with a phone call, you have to say, I love you/Miss you/See you soon/Don’t forget to bring the x with you… etc. I find small talk excruciating enough as it is, and I hate it even more without being face-to-face with the person.
A lot of the women in my life like to call and talk to me right when I’m in the middle of a good book or watching one of my favorite shows.
When texting, I can hold up my end of the conversation at my liesure.
For example, I’m watching tv and my GF texts:
GF: Hey what’s up
ME: [waits til a commercial comes on] Not much babe, what’s up with you?
This goes back and forth for the next hour or so.
GF: [She calls now because she wants to have an actual conversation]
Me: [Sends call directly to voice mail. Then I text her: I’m not taking calls right now. In the middle of Master Chef.]
GF: You’re such a douche.
Where did I say my phone was off? I said the internet was off. My phone remains on all the time. But in the course of a normal day, if my internet is off my phone lasts approximately 24-30 hours between NEEDING to be charged. That’s using the phone for calls, texts or playing games on it.
Turning on the wireless or 3g adaptors for an hour or so drops my phone’s usable life down to anywhere around 18-20 hours. If I’m using the internet heavily during a day I can get down to about a quarter of the battery life by the end of the working day.
I hate dead time in phone calls. It’s awkward. I can’t let my attention wander, because I don’t know when they’ll start talking again, and I feel like an impatient doofus just standing there busy-waiting on input. After I send a text, I can close the phone and put it down, and I will neither miss the response nor offend anyone by focusing on something else while they think about it.
I also have a terrible time parsing speech over the phone. This may be a personal quirk. It’s not hearing loss; I pass tests just fine, and don’t have trouble with speech in person, even when the speaker is out of view, or with things like music or audiobooks of decent quality. I would guess it has to do with frequency loss or compression, because I have similar problems with pulling out song lyrics from poor-quality AM broadcasts, and I’ve never, ever been able to do anything useful with a walkie-talkie.
Phone calls for me are a continual procession of uncomfortable pauses, talking over each other, not being able to see the other person’s body language, and having to guess at a lot of what’s being said (into only one ear, with questionable fidelity, when I may already be in a noisy environment) without necessarily having a lot of context. About half of my lines reduce to ‘what?’. Business calls (to someone who usually has a decent connection, with a known context) aren’t an issue, but it’s much, much easier to just text my friends.
Prior to reading this thread, I had a general opinion leaning slightly towards the OP’s lack of understanding of the necessity and/or preference of texting.
After reading through this thread, I do now realize that there are many specific instances where texting is appropriate and/or preferable, so thanks for that!
Still, I do very much HATE texting. I don’t mind getting them as long as no reply is required, but sending them is a tedious, time-consuming chore for me. I can type a email in seconds, but texting takes much longer, and I’m really not that slow of a texter. During down-time at home or work, it’s not as annoying, but most of my “Oh, yeah! I need to let X know about Y!” moments come while commuting (90-minutes, one-way), and I absolutely REFUSE to be one of “them”, so if it’s important, I make a one-button-speed-dial call.
There are a few styles of keyboard which are more enjoyable to type on than a default phone keypad, it just depends on your phone. Swype is pretty fast, once you’ve got the dictionary all trained up. MUCH faster than pressing a number 1-3 times for each letter. Or, you can get a full-on keyboard like a Blackberry has and be pretty fast with your thumbs. Part of the reason texting is so prominent is because, if you have a smartphone, it’s so easy.
