Why Do People Still Text
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I recognize the need to text people because other people only text. I'm not suggesting that many of us are not trapped with it. I have it and use it because lots of people in the family just don't check their email or have email (seriously, I feel like it is the dark ages, I've had email since I was 18 and before I worked in IT - everyone I know of my age had email just from going to college in that era) but my question is really.... at the base of the pyramid, what is making the people for whom there is no text dependency choose texting instead of cheaper, easier, more reliable communications methods that replaced texting decades ago?
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I've heard from a few people that it is literally a rejection of technology by kids that is driving it, a desire to rebel by going backwards with technology. Part of the culture of "cool" to be behind (like hipsters, etc.)
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And I'm not saying that texting doesn't continue to make sense as it always has.... for paging. Texting is the name for bidirectional paging. If you watch 30 Rock it is hilarious because they have that running gag about paging coming back and being cool again. And it's true, that's what has happened. People just don't use the term paging to refer to the messages anymore.
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Your point about the sender choosing if the message is important or not, things being an emergency or not...
To me this is the primary reason I use texts. Like you I disable notifications on new email, or else my phone would never shut up some days... but texts, like phone calls, I leave notifications enabled. This is the case for most people I converse with regularly.
It's true that I'll use text messages for non quickly needed responses from time to time.. but normally if I'm sending a text I need or want an answer right now. Example, message the wife I'm going to the store does she want anything - this message is important enough for her immediate notice, but not so important to require a call to ensure she gives me an answer this instant.
I'd say I'm equally frustrated by people who won't just call when they need something NOW. Instead they text you, and text you again and then maybe they'll call you - but more often than not the suddenly decide it's not that important and give up, though they generally would have gotten the answer they needed by calling instead (sometimes I don't hear the text tone, but will almost always hear the phone ringing it's longer ring tones - I suppose I could make the text tone more annoying and long).
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@Dashrender said:
Your point about the sender choosing if the message is important or not, things being an emergency or not...
I agree. You receive much less spam through texting. I do get spam every couple months, but that is nothing compared to email. I don't see this as an issue. If you don't like texting, that is fine. What about the other people who do like it and it serves their purposes? Just because they communicate differently doesn't mean it's wrong. It is also old fashioned to use a telephone or to meet someone face to face, and we all know that is quite productive compared to text or email.
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I don't and would be opposed to using texting for business, but for personal it's still quite handy.
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@IRJ said:
If you don't like texting, that is fine. What about the other people who do like it and it serves their purposes?
Because it forces you into carrying devices and for many years, paying against my will, to do so. Email is free, texting is not. Now I have it with other plans, sometimes, but not always. Now that I travel a lot, texting is a problem again. There are whole blocks of time that I don't have access to it or the costs are like $1/message. And it makes people just have lots of things.
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@MattSpeller said:
I don't and would be opposed to using texting for business, but for personal it's still quite handy.
Other than being forced into it, what handiness is there? I know of nothing that I can do with texting that email won't do, but a lot of things in the opposite direction like transparently handling dropped connections, crossing devices, being ubiquitously free, etc.
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@IRJ said:
It is also old fashioned to use a telephone or to meet someone face to face, and we all know that is quite productive compared to text or email.
That's not comparable. Texting is just an archaic form of the same thing without the benefits of convergence. There is no technological advantage to texting (except for the obvious "sometimes you have access to one network instead of the other" that could be solved if texting wasn't holding back Internet adoption.)
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@Dashrender said:
Your point about the sender choosing if the message is important or not, things being an emergency or not...
To me this is the primary reason I use texts. Like you I disable notifications on new email, or else my phone would never shut up some days... but texts, like phone calls, I leave notifications enabled. This is the case for most people I converse with regularly.
Exactly, and because it is now used for the most trivial of communications, it's critical use as the alert mechanism for the most important communications is gone.
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We've lost the "paging" functionality that SMS was designed for. It was an alert system when designed. It's been used to replace email in a bizarre way that it is not good for. It's harder to use, requires managing a second set of accounts, talks to the mailbox of a device rather than to a person.... it's complicated and confusing.
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I added a new bullet:
There is no means of identifying an SMS or MMS enabled phone number. The knowledge of this is transient, due to porting, and is kept completely by the end points.
An email address is for email, we know its function. A phone number is for calling, we know its function. Using a voice identifier to mimic email behaviour is odd as there is nothing in the number that indicates if it can accept SMS or not.
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@scottalanmiller it's vendor neutral & free for everyone (at least up here, I can't recall a smartphone plan that does not include unlimited texts at minimum)
also it's much less... formal? than an email - sometimes I just want to fire off a quick message without having to title it and all the hooplah.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Your point about the sender choosing if the message is important or not, things being an emergency or not...
To me this is the primary reason I use texts. Like you I disable notifications on new email, or else my phone would never shut up some days... but texts, like phone calls, I leave notifications enabled. This is the case for most people I converse with regularly.
Exactly, and because it is now used for the most trivial of communications, it's critical use as the alert mechanism for the most important communications is gone.
But email will NEVER be used for emergency notification - so no matter what texting will always sever a better goal for this - with the phone call being the best option.
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@Dashrender said:
But email will NEVER be used for emergency notification - so no matter what texting will always sever a better goal for this - with the phone call being the best option.
Why is that? Email is more immediate. Agreed that phone (sync com) is better than either (async com), but why would text be used for that if email is not good enough now that texting is being used when we have the least urgency?
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@MattSpeller said:
also it's much less... formal? than an email - sometimes I just want to fire off a quick message without having to title it and all the hooplah.
This is something that AJ said, but I don't buy it. SMS is the paging protocol. What is more formal than paging? What can be less formal than email? The idea that SMS is less formal than email is purely artificial. If you feel that email needs to be formal, that's an emotional change to email that you've added. Email itself doesn't have any such connotation, as MS Send as proven, right?
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@MattSpeller said:
@scottalanmiller it's vendor neutral & free for everyone (at least up here, I can't recall a smartphone plan that does not include unlimited texts at minimum)
Is phone service up there free? I thought it was owned by just a couple of carriers and cost as much as it does down here. How do you, without a phone plan, access SMS?
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@scottalanmiller said:
We've lost the "paging" functionality that SMS was designed for. It was an alert system when designed. It's been used to replace email in a bizarre way that it is not good for. It's harder to use, requires managing a second set of accounts, talks to the mailbox of a device rather than to a person.... it's complicated and confusing.
I agree that it's a pain that it's a separate thing from unified communications, but what second account are you talking about? You mean the phone number? Really? Come-on. I will always want the phone number of a person I'm texting because there will probably be a point at which I want to call them, or they want to call me (and by my having their phone number in my phone allows me to have caller ID when they call). So I call bullocks on managing multiple accounts.
This is further reduced that most phones can pull contact list information from email systems that the phone attach to, centralizing the management of all of the contact information for a person - their name, phone number, email address, mailing address,etc.
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How do you go to someone's house who has a smart phone and access your SMS if you don't have a phone? Here in Texas I now lots of people who have been unable to afford phones in the last three years and texting is the thing that they lost. Once they were really poor, email (and Facebook) were the free fallbacks. Texting only seems free when you are so affluent that you don't notice that you are paying for it every month.
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@Dashrender said:
I agree that it's a pain that it's a separate thing from unified communications, but what second account are you talking about? You mean the phone number? Really? Come-on. I will always want the phone number of a person I'm texting because there will probably be a point at which I want to call them, or they want to call me (and by my having their phone number in my phone allows me to have caller ID when they call). So I call bullocks on managing multiple accounts.
I email a lot of people that I don't have their personal numbers. I don't buy this argument. By far, most people who email me cannot text me nor do I want them having my personal phone numbers. Two different things, two different purposes.
