Texting: A Question
 

Why do people text? You've got a cellular phone. It's capable of full-duplex voice communication. Why go through the arduous task of typing in characters?

Why do people e-mail?

That's a good point. However, most people don't realize (or don't know) that you can use a PC to make a phone/voice call.

Email is for when you don't need immediate communication.

I used to be really annoyed by texting, before I figured out it had a serious advantage over placing calls: the ability to tell someone something without having to engage in a full conversation.

Texting = free. Call's not so much.

The reason I ask is that my wife has a friend who texts her cell phone about five times/day. I never set up "texting" on her account so it costs me something like $0.25/text that she sends.

Because its what all the cool kids are doing.

True. I guess that my point is that texting is halfway between a phone call and an e-mail.

Phone call:
Efficient communication
Somewhat intrusive

E-mail:
Moderately efficient communication
Very unobtrusive

Texting:
Very inefficient communication
Somewhat unintrusive

For what it's worth, I strongly dislike texting, but I have to deal with it from time to time since a lot of other people do.

What? Texting isn't free.

Texting is great because it's a way to have a 30 second convo without actually talking to the annoying person.

You won't believe this, but there are some people that text thousands of times a month. I know a girl whose parents got her unlimited texting when she did over 5000 in one month.

I see your point, to a point, but verbal communication is far more efficient than typed, at least for me. However, considering how loquacious my wife is, perhaps texting would be more efficient.

I was against texting for a long time. I fought it until last year.

I like it because I can get or send a quick note that explains something. I can get it in a meeting and know whats going on, without interupting for a call(silent). My wife uses them for 'reminders' too. I'll ask her to text to remind me about picking up the kids, something I'm supposed to do...

Its also a good way to communicate with people that annoy the shit out of you, but you want to be civilized with and stay on topic.

I also used it some this fall while bow hunting, to pass the time, chatting with my brothers about what we were seeing etc.