Text Expression

"They love their phones but hate talking on them"

This is a quote used to describe Millenials in the Time article "The Me Me Me Generation" by Josh Sanburn we had to read two weeks ago. Although I surprisingly agreed with almost every way we are described in those last few paragraphs (experiences more important than material goods, don't identify with big institutions, want constant approval, and so forth) this one description stood out to me as I read. It rang incredibly true and I want to talk about it a little bit.

I was raised in Mexico City and so I was in High School there when I got my first cell phone. It was one of those awfully simple ones that were in Black and White and didn't even have a camera -on the plus side, if you dropped them they would never break. Anyway, I had shitty cellphones all my life through the first two years of college until one faithful day I dropped it in the path of a New York subway train, which caused it to explode into a million pieces. I was devastated, but secretly not so much because I had wanted one of those fancy iPhones everyone seemed to love for a while now. My birthday was coming up and so I convinced my parents to get me one as a present.

Before I had an iPhone I almost never texted. My phones were so useless that it would take three times as long to text someone that to just call them (I still kind of believe this, but I go with the flow).  So I had been used to actually calling someone on the phone rather than sending a few texts and waiting for responses minutes later.

Rewinding my life a little bit, back in Mexico City in my teenage years texting was not a thing. The only texts anyone sent were to confirm a time to meet or to say you'd arrived someplace. No 'Hey what you up to tonight?' or 'Wassup' texts. We would call each other and figure out plans the old fashioned way. So it wasn't until I got accepted to NYU that I started realizing this texting culture was taken to a whole other level in the US. When I got the iPhone I had to get an unlimited texting plan because otherwise it was ridiculous trying to squeeze entire novels of thought into a single text, hoping someone would reply to all your questions in a single text and not ask you anything else so you wouldn't have to spend more money per text.

So after all this rambling, all I really wanted to say is that I find it really interesting that this phenomenon has happened with Millennials -even though we now see it extending to older generations as well.  So it begs the question: is texting a generational thing? Or is it only happening now because technology is allowing it? and is this a thing restricted to the Western culture of the US? How long will that keep up?