Is Texting a Problem?

My answer is YES! I will be the first to admit that I text a lot more than I ever thought I would, but for some young people it is getting out of hand. Unfortunately texting happens to be our “latest and greatest” (of course, along with email) mode of communication and writing to our friends and even our parents. I don’t know about all of you, but my parents go crazy when they see people texting. My mom usually says, “Why don’t you just call the person?”. Well mom, to be completely honest, I don’t know why we don’t. My belief is that it has to do with instant gratification and our society. If we call someone, there is a chance that they will not answer due to being busy with work, school, etc. But, with texting, it seems that no matter what we are doing, we seem to find a way to respond to someone…even if that means while we are DRIVING! Texting while driving has become a very dangerous factor in our society, especially with teens. I have linked a YouTube video that you might all find interesting about texting while driving and the high percentages of people who do it. I think the real question that we need to ask is , “Can we blame this on technology?”. Certainly technology has played the largest role in helping us communicate via texts, but this is out of control. There was a story last month where a teenage girl had over 35,000 texts in one month; that means over 1,000 a day! Personally, I can’t even imagine even having the time to complete this insane number of texts, much less, what could be THAT important to talk about via text?!?!?!?!? There are enough car accidents everyday without texting, why would we ever intentionally put people in danger? Another role that needs to be considered in this latest technology of writing is the parenting. I think that any child whose parents let him or her text that much, need to take a second look at their parenting skills and figure out a way to teach your child differently. As we discussed in class, our grammar, spelling, and probably our speech skills are also suffering due to this technology. Overall, I think that texting, email, and other technologies have greatly advanced our society and world, but we need to figure out a way to keep them under control!

Introduction

Hello,

My name is Kate. I am a student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I have created this blog for an English class and will be posting weekly on various topics related to technologies and writing. Please feel free to comment on anything, I am always open to discussion new ideas!