Texting ... Is anything really that important - Part II

Apparently I’m not the only one who gets irritated with people constantly texting. Yesterday’s blog post “Texting ... Is anything really that important?” 

brought about several comments of readers who voiced their own annoyance.

Before listing some of those comments, let me tell you what I saw at a bowling alley last weekend. On one of the lanes I noticed four girls and two boys, all of them teenagers. In-between waiting for their turn to throw the ball, they were sitting there, not saying a word to each other, but texting furiously on their phones.

Madeline from Melbourne commented that she was in a fashion boutique the other day, waiting for her friend in one of the dressing rooms. Next to her was a teenager looking at pictures. After a while the teenagers’ friend came out of the dressing room area and asked “Did you get my selfies?” to which the teenager replied “You should get black one.” Apparently, the girl in the dressing room had been sending her friend pictures of herself in various outfits, rather than coming out of the dressing room and showing herself.

Gina from Amsterdam, commented that she recently visited the Keukenhof in Lisse, when she noticed two girls scrolling through pictures of flowers, commenting and texting, completely oblivious to the abundance of flowers at their feet. She said “I felt like grabbing them by the scruff of their necks, forcing them to look what at the beauty around them.”

Angela of Vancouver said much the same. She noticed a couple of girls looking at pictures of cats and kittens on their phone, not noticing the cat at their feet, desperate for some attention.

There were more comments, some from as close by as Canada and the United States, others from as far away as China, Romania, Poland, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the Ukraine, all of them complaining or making fun of cellphone use. 

But it seems in addition to texting being annoying, it could – according to Brendon Keim - also be bad for young brains.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/is-multitasking-bad.html

Texting ... is anything really that important?

A friend recently posted on Facebook that they’d gone hiking on the Lone Mountain Park trail in Las Vegas. Along the way they noticed two girls on horseback, listening to music and texting on cell phones. She called this a funny incident, to me this is annoying as hell.

I admit, texting is one of my pet peeves. I can understand that one person would text another to let them know their whereabouts, such as “I’m still at work” or “I’m in the lobby”. In general though, what is so important that it has to be communicated immediately?

If I was to meet those two girls on horseback, listening to music and texting, I would have a hard time not pulling the earbuds out of their ears and slapping the phones out of their hands. I would give them the message “Pay attention to your horse, your surroundings and enjoy the sounds of nature.”

Of course, it’s not just those two who are obsessed with texting. I’ve heard of men texting while using a urinal, heard women texting while in a bathroom stall, and there’s the ever annoying texting while walking and even worse, driving. How many accidents could have been avoided if some silly message had not been sent?

How different it was back in the day.

When home phones became popular, my folks applied for a line and were told that the current waiting time was between 12 to 16 months. Because of my diabetic brother, and a note from the doctor, stating that a home phone was necessary for his safety, we received our phone in just three months.

When cell phones became popular, only business people carried one. For the average person, a cellphone was a luxury they could ill afford.

Nowadays, just about everyone, even children, have cellphones. Only, in many cases the phone is not used for calling. No, for many people, especially youngsters, it’s a status symbol as they put the latest model on display. They use the phone for games, to check their email messages and Facebook updates, and of course to text.

Parents will say that they gave their child a cell phone for their safety. Hm, makes you wonder how kids way back when survived. When my generation was growing up, nobody had cell phones, yet we all made it to adulthood.

Did we ever face emergencies ... sure we did. I remember spraining my ankle on my way home from school. I didn’t have a phone, there was nobody around, so for a little over a mile, I hobbled home that day. My generation learned how to handle a situation and in the process, we toughened up.

Like I said, texting is a pet peeve of mine. It annoys me when people walk at a snail pace because they’re busy texting, it makes my blood boil when I see a driver punching in a message while standing at a red light, or even worse, driving. And it certainly annoys me to see kids, glued to their phone.