What Is It About Texting?

I’d like to talk about texting this week. I don’t mean the dangers of texting while driving or the humorous things that auto-correct does to the texts we write. I want to address texting as a communication medium. For it is a unique creature – in many ways unlike talking or calling or emailing or letter writing, etc. Interestingly, its closest communication relative may be the telegraph.

Texting has only been with us for about 25 years, but, to state the obvious, it is ubiquitous. Is it replacing other forms of communication? My millennial daughter and I had a long chat – via text – and I asked her about it. She said, “Talking on the phone is a dying art... I feel like they’re [phone calls] becoming like writing letters.” (See my blog about writing letters!)

So, what is it about texting?

Some of the pros: When you write a text, you have time to think - to compose- rather than thinking on your feet like you have to do on a phone call. You can send the text now, and the recipient can wait for a convenient time to reply. You can share photos and much more than just text now. You can carry on text conversations with multiple people much more easily than setting up a conference call.

But, there are cons: Texting may be prone to more errors than other media. Like email, it is difficult to interpret tone – or to misinterpret it. It takes people out of the present and focuses their attention elsewhere. And need I mention the distraction that texting causes?

As a communication person, I think the definitive thing about texting is that it is an asynchronous form of communication. Essentially, that just means “not live.” Media like live TV and radio, phone calls, and the theatre are all synchronous – they're happening in real time. Letters, email, voicemail, movies – these are all asynchronous. Stored, not immediate. When thought of this way, texting definitely fits that last group.

Interestingly, though, with the evolution of mobile technology, we will see changes to, and eventually the eclipse of texting. Voice, vision and touch inputs and outputs, artificial intelligence, even implants, will change the whole ballgame – and probably very soon. For us boomers, we might take some satisfaction in knowing that our kids’ children may someday say to their parents, “What’s texting?”