Injuries piling up as text messaging increases in popularity

Brace yourself for what you’re about to read. If you’re currently drinking something, put it down if you want to prevent laughter-induced choking.

Almost four million people suffer from text message-related injuries every year.

Yes. You read that right. According to Virgin Mobile’s text-awareness Web site (www.PractiseSafeText.com,) an estimated 3.8 million people are reporting “text-related injuries each year.”

A lot of people might take this moment to lament the downfall of society as the text message generation starts to enter the workforce. I’m not a lot of people.

Why is it that we read so much about how the rapid rise of text-based communication is a bad thing? Since when is being able to get in touch with mass amounts of people through quick messages something we should be worried about?

But worried is exactly what the punditocracy is.

Right now, the top hit on Google News for “text message generation” is a story about how worried some parents are that their daughter is going to forget how to have face-to-face conversations because she texts too often.

Are you serious?

When was the last time you met someone who couldn’t carry on a conversation because the only way they know how to talk is by sending text messages?

I interact with a lot of people every day, many of whom are rabid text-messagers, and have never found myself thinking, “Boy, I wish this person could speak in thoughts longer than 160 characters.”

My little brother cranks out about 6,000-8,000 texts a month. Have I ever worried about the negative effects that text messaging might have in his life? I’m not sure I can even give a serious response to a question like that.

(On a side note, how impressive is it that he can send that many text messages a month? I mean seriously. Give it up for my little brother — that kid has seriously quick thumbs.)

When Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1439, people were excited about how rapidly we would be able to print and distribute information to the masses. To this day we still celebrate how magnificent of a turning point in history that was.

Something tells me that Gutenberg wouldn’t be amused with the backlash against text-messaging that we’re experiencing these days. Imagine reading an article written by some Ivory Tower elitist bemoaning the “printing generation” and how printed forms of communication are going to destroy civilization as people forget how to write with their hands or communicate with their mouths.

It’s funny, right? But that’s exactly what’s going on. Text messaging has opened up a new door to massive communication and we’re being told that using it too often is going to have negative impacts on our ability to communicate.

Does anyone else see a problem with that logic?

Last year in the United States we sent about 75 billion text messages per month. That’s according to CTIA-The Wireless Association, a nonprofit advocate for wireless communications.

75 billion a month equates to about 2.4 billion a day. 100 million every hour. 1.6 million every minute. Or 26,666 text messages every second, of every day.

I read statistics like that and can’t help but be amazed at how far we’ve come in such a few short years.
Am I worried that our 26,000 text messages per second might cause problems in developing a generation that is capable and literate? I think there’s really only one proper response to a question like that.

LOL.

Brett Nolan is a philosophy and political science senior.