The future of children and mega-texting

This is a response to the article and comments from MSNBC article called "6,473 texts a month, but at what cost? " I couldn't help it but just let the American readers and scientists know that they're not the only country on the earth. Wait, maybe my message is to the American-centric minds of the MSNBC /Washingtonpost writer Donna St. George who created the article.





Here goes:Let me tell you my experience from a country where all this started/happened 9 years ago.

1. Your children, (and maids and drivers) will eventually have 2-3 phones. But that's the limit. Some will go back to 2, some will stay at 3 phones - a small percentage (the oldies?) will just have one.


2. A very small percentage will STOP texting altogether and will demand that you call them or meet them to get their attention.

3. Most will continue texting, but once they're out of school, the text rate will decrease and eventually be devoted mostly to "setting up meetings" texts or "i'm bored in this party/meeting, I should text someone".

4. When dining out or inside the house, they will still absent mindedly twirl the phone like an ornament, even if it is $500 worth.


5. Some impressionable youths will start typing emails in txtspeak, or answer forums in txtspeak. This should be prevented by using heavy social sanctions (ostracize!, jk).

6. They will still sleep with the phone in arms reach.

7. How did we fix the unlimited texting "sickness?". We didn't. The telcos got smart and started charging for individual texts. Soon texting became limited because the phone had no more "load" to text. So allowance or lack of extra money limited the text counts.  Of course, until the telcos discovered "Pass A Text", where children can request anybody (working siblings) to send them "load".

8. Touch screen phones prevents texting while driving. Want to stop it? Get your children an iphone or a prada or a nokia 5800 variant.  Actually touch screens prevent texting while doing most ANYTHING.

9. Keypad phone texters will have mastered texting with one hand that they can watch the road and text with one hand - of course absentmindedly driving and dangerously distracted. But they will still do this. Even cab drivers.

10. You all might as well stop the highest text done in a day contests because it's futile. In our little country, the number of texts a day equals the number of texts in the US for a month. No kidding - and with a fraction of the texting population.Ok, this part reserves a citation but only if you're American, the Filipinos and people in the telecom industry worldwide already know this.

This is my eleven thousand pesos worth.

Posted in: future,msnbc,sms,texting,washington post