Laura~Rosa Cebollero Hornedo (Edison) Texting, the new voice.

Texting has become part of today Modern Culture.80% of Americans text every day .They text while driving ,studying and  even at work! Text messaging has become an active from of communication , sometimes preferred over calling; and  can be used to carry full conversations over the time span of a whole day. As harmless as texting looks, there is a dengerous side to it. 

For text messaging the split of age group is as follows: 13-27’s: 87% text, 15-37’s 73% text, 28-39’s: 44% text, 40-49’s: 18% text. Text messaging has become an international crave and numbers have grow exponentially. The convenience of  texting is being able to do it at any time, any place and while doing almost anything. This is one of the main reasons why most of young adults prefer it over calling someone .After all is quick, cheap and private.This sociological concern of young adults having a dependency and a need of texting  has different impacts in today society some of which include distractions while driving, sexting, (a slang for the act of sending sexually explicit or suggestive content between mobile devices using SMS), and  an academic impact on today’s young  generation. First of all, a study by AAA (American Automobile Association) discovered that an alarming 46% of teens admitted to being distracted behind the wheel due to texting. Texting has also been linked as a secondary source in numerous motor accidents, in which police investigations of mobile phone records have found that many drivers have lost control of their cars whilst attempting to send or retrieve a text message. 

 Another issue linked to texting is sexting, a genre of texting which contains either text, images or video that is intended to be sexually arousing. A 2008 survey by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com suggested a trend of sexting and other seductive online content being readily shared between teens. One in five teen girls surveyed (22 percent)—and 11 percent of teen girls ages 13–16 years old—say they have electronically sent, or posted online, nude or semi-nude images of themselves. One-third (33 percent) of teen boys and one-quarter (25 percent) of teen girls say they were shown private nude or semi-nude images. Sexting becomes a legal issue when teens (under 18) are involved because any nude photos they may send of themselves would put the recipients in possession of child pornography.  

This type of behavior promotes certain promiscuous activities in young kids and young adults, which my lead to a major social problems. We are exposing them to certain and unnecessary dangers. 

Finally, another factor is the number of students caught using mobile phones to cheat on exams has increased significantly in recent years. Highly publicized reports, beginning in 2002, of the use of text language in school assignments caused some to become concerned that the quality of written communication is on the decline. While some reports claim that teachers and professors are beginning to have a hard time controlling the problem, the notion that text language is widespread or harmful is refuted by research from linguistic experts. 

All of these different effects have caused a preference of texting over actual human contact.  I don’t think texting should be abolished but it’s something that we should be able to control, use it in the right manner and more efficiently.

This entry was posted on 26. April 2009 at 22:59 and is filed under Introduction to Sociology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.