Texting Makes Adults Behave like Teenagers

Bangalore: With most people having cell phones, texting has become one of the easiest ways to communicate with one another. Texting is not only popular among teenagers; it makes its presence even among middle aged men and women. In fact, texting is one of the best ways to come over a husband-wife fight experts say.

Even though all age group people have the habit of texting, a recent study conducted by Pew Research showed that around 5 percent of adults send more than two hundred messages per day. Though this sounds very impressive, teens have always led in terms of texting. Percentage of teen’s texting everyday increases up to 15 percent, which is around five times more than adult’s texting.

The middle aged adults have vague way of use texting. In a text conversation between a husband and a wife, the wife sends a blank message to her husband, which means she is expecting him to start a conversation or call her to sort out the issue. Adults tend to discuss more serious issues and sometimes find texting more comfortable in sorting out issues that are related to family and work.

Adults become so addicted to texting that their behavior pattern changes and they become like teenagers when they are messaging each other. The curiosity, anxiety, impatience and the brain activity level when they get a message is very similar to that of teenagers. This happens without their knowledge. At some of time texting turns them back into teenagers.

According to Dr Sherry Turkle, a Psychologist in the program in Science, Technology, and Society at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The form of texting is immediate. Many people, who texts a lot have the habit of checking their sms first and then prefer to check their e-mail or voice messages. It may sound very obvious, but the speed at which they access and give preferences is very interesting.

According to Bonnie Rochman, the habit of texting also has the capacity to turn the adults into social robots. This can be because; most of the people prefer to apologize through texting so that they don’t have to experience the awkwardness by asking apology personally. Asking apology through cell phone digital displays means that the critical social skills like making eye contact, learning empathy and being a good listener are under threat, reports the Time Healthland.

Most of the adults who get through the habit of texting have no limit of time. For example, if a man who is interested in a woman messages her will gradually build the habit of waiting for her messsage. They have the capacity of waiting for minutes, hours, two days, a week and also a month all together. Some people, who don’t reply for an uninterested message, claim that they had not received any messages at all.

This phenomenon has begun to worry most of the physicians and psychologists across the world, who are of the opinion that this kind of practice by the human beings leads them towards anxiety, distraction, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation.  

Where is the advanced technology leading us to? It has made the people express their thoughts by using their mobile phones and e-mails. It has made the human being think technically even to express their thoughts to the other person. What’s you opinion on this, is advancement a threat to people or a boon?