The final text I will be receiving for the near and perhaps distant future was a compliment form my niece about my tie-dye shirt. While we were in the same grocery store. Instead of just walking over to me and saying, "HI! nice shirt!" She just HAD to text me. That stopped today. No longer will the females of my acquaintance be texting me with messages that could have been told to me in person or by talking to me.
A little background after the squiggle...
I first signed up for my phone plan under a company that was later bought out by ATT. Right before they were to be taken over I redid my contract for another 2 years. I had already scouted out ATT's plans and none of them were any where near the deal that I had. I have unlimited talk to any phone anywhere in America for 55 bucks a month. Their unlimited talk was considerably more at that point and I think at present is approximately twice that amount. Every time they send me some offer for a new phone to replace this beater I think to myself, "Exactly why would I want to spend twice the money to do the same thing?" I will eventually be leaving their company and will probably go with Virgin. At the time I signed up with Cellular One (smaller Central Texas company that was bought out by ATT) I had no interest in texting. I can type like a fiend on a qwerty keyboard but I knew better than to attempt it while driving. I am not fond of even reading them while driving. The thought that I would try to do so while hurtling down 635 in Dallas at breakneck speed is enough for me to want to chuck the thing out the window. Today that ended. I went to my local ATT store and told them to shut it down. These people that cannot see fit to answer their phone or call me will have to decide if it is important enough to call. I am done with texting for now. I am free from receiving mass texts. I will no longer have to pay a quarter every time someone wants to tell me something that could have just as easily been done with a call. While the majority of my texts are from women, men are no less likely to text me. The kids that I work with will fill up my inbox with things that could have been told to me over the phone. If it is important enough to text me, then it is important enough to call me.
Nielsen did a study of age demographics and phone use. The bottom line is that the younger you are the more texts you are likely to send and receive a month. The stats were shocking to me.
Texting is on the rise in a major way. The average U.S. teenager sends an average of 3,339 texts per month, or six texts every hour he or she is awake, according to an extensive study by The Nielsen Company. Kids ages 13 to 17 send roughly twice as many texts as any other age group, outpacing 18 to 24 year-olds, who send about 1,630 texts in any given month. The study tracked data usage from the monthly cell phone bills of more than 60,000 mobile subscribers from April to June 2010 and combined this data with survey answers from more than 3,000 teenagers.
If those kids need to talk to this old man from now on they can do it old school.