Thirteen-year-old Morgan Pozgar, LG National Texting Queen
Sure, instant messaging is fast and efficient. For many teenagers, it’s also a great way to avoid those OMG moments — that’s “omigod” — of mortifying face-to-face confrontations.
More than four in 10 teens, or 43 percent, who instant message use it for things they wouldn’t say in person, according to an Associated Press-AOL poll released Thursday. Twenty-two percent use IMs to ask people out on dates or accept them, and 13 percent use them to break up.
“If they freak out or something, you don’t see it,” said Cassy Hobert, 17, a high school senior from Frenchburg, Kentucky, and avid IMer who has used it to arrange dates. “And if I freak out, they don’t have to see it.”
Don’t just blame the teens — this is true for adults to. (And that includes me!)
C’mon everybody — I’ll bet it includes you. How many of use are HAPPY when we get an answering machine because we are too “wussy” to talk with someone live?
In the other countries I’ve lived in, they SMS a lot more than here in the US and they all claim this is to save money but I think it is welcome technology in places that have more rigid cultural rules.
I hate texting … just frak’n call me.
I don’t text. A call does fine.
I don’t IM, a call is fine.
I email, but that is to usually attach something, else a call is fine.
I don’t hand out memos, a call is fine.
I pick up the old fashioned phone. If in area and I have the time I meet face to face.
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#3 a lot of people agree with you but I have a lot of customers who hate calls. They only do e-mails. I am sort of moving that way too. I can respond to 20 e-mails in less than an hour. I could never be that efficient on a voice call. Plus with the phone, both parties have to be available at the same time.
I have never sent a phone text message or a computer instant message. First of all, I don’t like to have a server running on my system and secondly, it’s a giant waste of time. E-mail works perfectly well.
#6
I use all three. E-mail is great. Instant messaging on a computer is good when you are chatting with a friend but multi-tasking. You can do something else for a moment and come back to the conversation and you don’t have to hold a phone up to your ear or go on speaker. I also like instant messaging for quicker give and take with tech support folks. And it allows them to speak with several people at once. Text messaging on a phone is good for folks who don’t have Blackberries. And you can also have text conversations with several people at once.
I use all the main technologies and think they all have their place.
When you’re on the phone, SMS is really far better for addresses, emails, and other very specific information like that.
I like email but a lot of things but I’ve noticed that it can REALLY SUCK for sensitive issues. It seems like nobody get the tone right in emails.
I use e-mail’s for most stuff. I like IM’s for chatting with friends in Europe rather than the phone. I don’t use texting(though it’s really big in the UK.) because I don’t carry a cell phone or any of those devices.
I have given in to my family and my Doctor’s and now carry a cell with GPS locator when I go hiking in the mountains or running in the country. It killed me to have to buy one. There’s almost nothing I hate more than watching people texting like their life depended on it or yakking on a cell all day.
I am going to buy one of the cell jammers. I just read another article about them in the Times of London and I just have to have one.
What I don’t understand is they say it’s illegal to have one here (and in the UK) but I know that some of the larger theater chains are using blocks in their theater’s. Was I misinformed on that? 🙂
This is totally off topic.
I just answered the Vizu web poll question on *how important is a candates religion to you when you vote*………I answered *Not a consideration at all*…..but that’s not true. Because of my screwing up and voting for Bush, I have come to the point where I do now look at a person’s religious view’s. I don’t care if the person has a belief, but I want to know what effect their belief has on their policy’s.