Does Texting Affect Communication?

Text messaging became welcomed for a long time since cellular phone came out. With invention and innovation of technology, people are more likely to text each other instead of calling. Smartphone is one of the most successful invention in the past ten years, after the smartphone stepped into people’s daily lives, things were changes, people found that it was not only a phone which was able to build connections with somebody, but a tool to do numerous things that people had never expected before especially text messaging. I found that most of people looked at their phones with their earphones plugged when they were walking on the street, nearly everyone was texting messages. However, the debates of texting have never stopped and topics are varying.

Since I read several articles within the book They Say / I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, I found that text messaging is one of the best ways to communicate with each other because it does not influence people’s writing skills and helps people express themselves. The first article that I want to mention is “Does Texting Affect Writing?” by Michaela Cullington. In the article, the author states that text messaging is a easy, quick and convenient way to gain relationship from people to people. Then she brings up a controversial issue which is abbreviations effect on people’s writing skills or not. In fact, the reason why people are willing to use abbreviations is that they realize abbreviations can make communications easier and shorter. By researching

Some critics such as some teachers and parents may claim that text messaging effect on people’s writing skills because people usually use abbreviations which harm to their grammar and spelling abilities. Also, some people who prefer calling rather than texting messages may claim that giving somebody a call would more efficient than sending a text message. People should reduce frequency of texting messages and give a call if you have to contact someone. That may be partly true. However, I do not think text messaging will cause decline of people’s writing skills. I have never seen people who write an essay with abbreviations or textspeak. Hence, people are able to distinguish contents they write are for messages or formal essays. Besides, I think text messaging is more efficient than calling, also many people including myself are not likely to give or receive a call. Sherry Turkle, who teaches in the program in science, technology and society at MIT, said that “once you have access to e-mail, instant messaging, and texting, things change” (375). When I write a text or e-mail, I can consider deeply and make sure I do not make mistakes on what I want to illustrate and even spelling. When I receive a call, I have to respond immediately which I have no enough time to think about