Issue date: 8/25/08 Section: Accent

Although still a relatively new form of communication-originating in Europe in the early 1990s-Americans are snapping up text messaging technologies in escalating numbers.

As of February 2008, Communications News reports that U.S. citizens send approximately one billion text messages every day, up from roughly 2.8 billion per month in 2004 and 6.3 billion per month in 2006.

And texting, often used in lieu of spoken conversation, is also being used for increasingly diverse purposes.

In the world of entertainment, viewers of the reality show American Idol voted for their favorite contestants via text message approximately 64.5 million times last season, and that was only through Cingular wireless carriers.

In the world of sports, text message subscribers can receive updates from MLB.com on final scores and player injury reports.

And in the world of love, Web sites such as www.txt2flrt.com allow users to find dates through its matchmaking service.

Text messages have also worked their way into the legal world, and cases involving everyone from NBA star Kobe Bryant to the mayor of Detroit have included text message transcripts as evidence.

On a more common scale, consumers can use text message alerts to learn about breaking news, traffic jams, hair salon appointments, weather changes, bank account transactions, flight cancellations, local events and, of course, to keep in touch with loved ones at all times.

Because text messaging is instant and almost always accessible, it can also be a great help in emergency situations.

Voice-to-voice calls have a large bandwidth requirement and in many emergencies, phone lines are often jammed by high call volumes.

Text messaging, on the other hand, has a small bandwidth requirement and can often get through when voice calls cannot.

Since it's apparent that text messaging has made substantial inroads into how we communicate with each other, I conducted a small research project to see if I could figure out precisely how much text messaging has saturated our society.

To recruit local participants for the survey portion of my study, I placed an advertisement in the print version of the University Journal and on suunews.com, for one week.

At the end of the week, one participant was randomly selected to win a $100 gift certificate redeemable at the SUU bookstore.

In the survey, I asked questions about participants' normal text messaging habits, how they learned about the recent deaths of actor Heath Ledger and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President Gordon B. Hinckley and about their general information-gathering habits.

Here's what I found out: males exchange more text messages than females overall, but more females texted each other about the deaths of Ledger and Hinckley than males.

The younger age group (18 to 22-year-olds) texted 15 percent more often on average than the older age group (over 22-years-old), and the younger group texted slightly more about Ledger and Hinckley than the older group, as well.

Overall, participants ranked the Internet, television and text messages, respectively, as the top three sources they access for breaking news information.

Now, clearly my single research project isn't the final word on all things text-related, but seeing text messages place that high in the rankings might be an indication that, like the Internet not many years ago, texting may surpass traditional news providers as a primary source for breaking news information.

Whether that actually happens or not, text messaging technologies are still, no doubt, actively putting their thumbprints on the world of communication.



Angie Smith is a master of communication student from Las Vegas. She can be reached at angiepangie1134@hotmail.com

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