A Note to Text Messagers. Stop the Madness

      My wife and I had traveled up to the Bloomington/Normal area to visit our son at Illinois State. As always we took Timothy out for some vittles having that parental fear that our son isn’t eating enough proper meals. We stopped at a nice restaurant and I was amazed at what I saw at the table next to us. A mother, about 40, and a teenage daughter perhaps 16 or 17 was sitting together but they were not talking to each other. Instead, both of them had their heads down directed to their laps for almost the entire hour my family and I were enjoying our meal.

      It took me a few minutes to realize that the two of them were busy texting someone and that this electronic banter held precedence over the two of them bonding as a mother and daughter over a nice meal.

      I watched as often, a fork would be put down or a glass slammed to the table as a return text caused both of them to literally drop what they were doing to continue what I am certain was a conversation that could best have been done by phone and surely could have been done at a later time. Remarkably, both of them had to interrupt their text messaging when their cell phones rang. I imagine when the two of them got home; they told the rest of the family how delightful their mother/daughter visit had been.

      The entire field of text messaging has grown into an  epidemic situation according to various reports. It is said that in 2006 over 150 billion text messages were sent in the U.S. alone. That is a staggering 300,000 per minute, 24 hours a day. There is no source to determine how many were truly necessary means of communications but I will suffer the criticism by stating I believe less than a percent of them had valuable information that required a text message rather than another form of contact; another form of contact that could have been delayed till another more personal and convenient time.

      Now I have looked everywhere for the one bon a fide reason why we need text messaging at all but the reasons don’t hold much water with me. Creators state it is a convenient way to be notified of important information while at a meeting but I promise you if I was holding a meeting and a person directed their attention away from what I was saying I would tell them they could leave the meeting and the company. Students throughout chat rooms remark how they are able to communicate at school during classes without the teacher catching their inattentiveness and taking away their cells. Is that truly a good reason to have text messaging? Has anyone ever thought of concentrating on what the teacher is trying to teach?

     There are a great many states that are passing or preparing to pass laws that would make texting while driving a vehicular violation. Most of them really aren’t taking the offense seriously with fines as low as $20. being proposed in California for watching your key pad rather than the road. How has it come to the point that individuals think the task of driving a one-ton vehicle at speeds upwards of a mile a minute requires they have something to do to pass the boredom.

     Cell phone usage has exploded to bizarre heights but it appears the phenomenon of typing messages in pig English is catching up to it as our society continues to find ourselves wrapped in a world that requires we become and remain instantly available.

     There have been enough studies to show cell phone usage while driving impairs concentration but now studies are becoming available that show college students admit to texting while driving at an astonishing 35 to 50% of those questioned

     It has come to the point where we are going to have to make a decision about ourselves. Are we going to control the technology that continues to come into our lives or will we continue to allow the technology to control us.

     I will await your answer. Just as soon as you get off your cell phone.