Can you think of a feature on a phone that most teens use the most? Internet? Instant Messaging? Nope. Its texting. At least thats what I see everyone around me doing.
Personally, I am one of the many few who has a cell phone, but does not have texting. Most people just include it into their cell phone plan. I would like to have it, but my mother thinks otherwise.
Recently during my Honors English Class we learned about three key ways to win an argument using Aristotle's categories: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. I tested these three ideas out in my mother's explaination of why I do not need texting.
Ethos (Credibility or ethical appeal): It costs less to call someone than to add on the extra fee of texting. Also, many people have gotten into trouble while texting at an innapropriate time. It is better off that you do not have the temptation.
Pathos (Emotion/connection): When you are constantly texting someone and not verbally talking to them, it is indefinitely a less personal and welcoming way to communicate.
Logos (Logic): Why would you need to text someone when you can easily call them?
While these ideas are well thought out and put together, they are lacking in the Logos and the Pathos area. For me, I like to stay ultra connected with my friends and family, and I also have to be. I need to be picked up at a specific time after school from my Model U.N. or InterAct meeting so that I can get home in time to start my homework. Then I need to be whisked away again in order to make my volleyball practice that is 20 minutes away. You add coming home from volleyball games at 9:30 at night twice a week or on occasion a choir practice here and there and that is quite a lot of minutes and time gone into calling my parents just for a ride. Logically speaking, if I had texting it would be purely simple to just type in what time they need to pick me up (because Lord knows the times always change) and it would be as simple as that.
Pathos fits right into that dilemma called time. I don't have to time to chit chat with my friends all night to keep up on the "She did what?"'s and the "He did that?!"'s. Instant Messaging and Facebook don't even work so well because not everyone has I.M. or a Facebook account, but I know plently who have texting. When I want to say "hey" to friends I haven't seen in months it's a little awkward to call them out of the blue and start a conversation. What a better way than to text them.
So you can see, my mother and I clearly have some more work to do on this subject. Her ideas are like gold and mine are like silver. They're both good, but some like others in a different perspective.
1 comment:
Ah, and you have me thinking about how texting works. . .
Setting aside those who text in order to hide the fact that they're communicating (you can't very well whip out the phone in a class or at a concert and start yapping), I wonder if texting is a form of communication unique to our new society.
What I mean is if you don't have time for chit-chat ot a short call ("Hey, can you pick me up from school? Thanks, I love you!"), is this more about how we want to manage our lives and relationship than it is about convenience? Sure, we can communicate with more people more quickly, but we also do so more superficially.
Take FB as an example. It works for me to keep track of my alumni and find out what they're up to, grab an occasional coffee, etc. But I can hardly claim that I'm somehow closer to them because we both happened to click "Friend" and I get a few automatic updates that say they're watching "House."
Texting works the same way. We correspond in thought-bytes instead of sound-bytes, trimming away the bits of language we own, the nuance and poetry of our writing, into kno-ng wht bf we cld not say, yk? omg, poms, so ttfn!
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