Talkers vs. Texters: The social and psychological effects of SMS text messaging

When was the last time somebody asked you if you own a mobile phone? Can’t remember? No wonder why. According to analysts at IDC, many Western European markets have moved past 100 per cent saturation. Mobile phone ownership is universal, and people use them constantly. If you don’t have a mobile, you’re effectively a non-person. And if you do have one, you are perhaps just another media-savvy, technologically-enslaved cyberkid. Researchers now divide mobile generation victims into ‘talkers’ and ‘texters’. The way you use your cell phone can say surprisingly much about you.

If you often find yourself using a keyboard of your mobile rather than a microphone, you are most probably a texter – a person who expresses the real-self easier through texting than either face-to- face or through voice calls. And you are not alone. The text messaging culture is growing fast.

Nokia’s world-wide survey of 3300 people proved that over 80 per centof them reported text messaging as the most used function on their mobiles. Another study by NOP revealed that, in Britain at least, the mobile phones market is dominated by teenagers. In 2001 nearly 80 per cent of people aged between 14 and 16 owned cell phones and as much as 90 per cent of them claimed to text more than they talk.

Plymouth University researchers, Danna and Fraser Reid, who looked at that growing phenomenon in 2004, were concerned that still little is known about the social and sociological impact of texting on social interaction among regular users and the long-term consequences of texting on the development and maintenance of these relationships.
They found that texters were significantly more lonely and more socially anxious than talkers, what can have various, but not necessarily negative, impacts on their relationships.

According to Reid, texters tend to think about themselves as shy and try not to attract too much attention. This may be because such personality traits stop them from establishing relationships in the ‘real’ world and create a stronger need to express the real-self. That need is satisfied by texting.

Texters are also likely to have a smaller social network compared to those who don’t experience problems in traditional face-to-face communication. Mobile phone messaging is more likely to help them develop new relationships and maintain the existing ones with friends and family.