Thank god for my cellphone.  I might not have a complicated data plan, or a Blackberry or an iPhone, but texting works and it’s important to me.  It’s nice to have some contact with the outside world, trust me.  For me, it’s a way to stay in touch with my friends, especially during the long summer months when everyone decides to drop off the face of the planet.  I mostly use my phone for texting because talking on the phone has gone out of fashion, at least for my generation.  Let’s be honest, I really don’t have a conversation with anyone on the phone unless they’re over 40.  It’s just a plain old hassle, and every time I pick up the phone and someone talks nonstop for thirty minutes, I flinch and think this is why texting is so much more convenient!

You could say that texting is a teenage epidemic.  According to my driving instructor, it’s so extreme that teenagers argue they can text and drive because they are so good at typing quickly that they don’t have to take their eyes off the road.  I mean, yeah I love texting, but please, that is such bad logic… I don’t text on the road, but I text to coordinate with my parents, coordinate with friends, and admittedly, to gossip with friends over what crazy things happened over the weekend.  Once I was texting in the halls at school and a psycho teacher ran up to me and blared “Texting alert, texting alert, texting alert!” right into my ear…needless to say, I don’t text during school, or at least not within view of that teacher.  While looking for some stats on teen texting, I found a 2010 survey by The Nielsen Company which found the average teenager (13 to 17 years old) sends or receives 3,339 texts per month which is something more than 100 per day or about one every six minutes in a 10 hour day … that’s a whole lot of interpersonal networking!!

Photo via Michael Smith’s Principal’s Page Blog