Texting gains ground over calls

For many years, the phone calls have played a very important role in our lives, but according to some studies, its glory might have come to an end.

Clive Thompson writes in an article from the August number of Wired magazine that we are heading to the death of the telephone call. Media research firm Nielsen said that the average number of mobile phone calls that we make is dropping every year and the calls are shorter year after year. In 2005 the average call had a three minutes length while now they are less than 1.5 minutes long. They say that the reason for the calls getting shorter is the constant interruption it causes and that people search for more polite ways to communicate with each other. The alternatives to calling are now instant messaging and texting which allows us to contact our friends without invading their privacy. The new generation of communicators avoids the telephone because texting, instant messaging and social networking can keep them in touch with each other in less intrusive ways. Don Kellogg, which is the senior manager for telecommunication research and insights at the Nielsen Co., says that it is true that the number of mobile call minutes is decreasing, the trend is mostly observed among young users. Young adults drag the limit down, but anyone who is older than 35 years is using their phones for calling just as much as they did last years.

Between 2008 and 2010 the average number of minutes used by young adults aged between 18 and 24 year old dropped from 1200 to 900 and adults aged between 24 and 34 years experienced a slight decline in the number of minutes of their calls too. But the data from the groups aged over 35 did not show any change in the number of minutes spoken over the past couple of years. But researchers say that in time younger adults will influence the behavior of older adults. Amanda Bee, aged 20, a junior at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania says that everybody she knows uses text messaging, including her parents and grandparents, so basically she has no reason to call any more. She says that she taught her family how to text and since then she only used texting to communicate with them because this way they all have the chance to express their thoughts. Mike Farrell, a documentarian and journalism professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, aged 62, says that he has learned too to use the phone to text in the detriment of phone calls. He says that he now prefers text messaging, but when dealing with professional correspondence he prefers e-mail, which tends to be more direct. He says that he is very close to dumping his land line because the only people he talks to on the phone are his in-laws and people who want to sell him something on the phone. Farrell said that you can solve problems more quickly by text messaging than by calling. Although people tend to use more texting and e-mailing than actual calling, psychologists say that the tone of voice and tempo are lost when people decide to text instead of dial. Patricia Wallace, director information technology at the Johns Hopkins University and also an expert on information technology and psychology says that feedback is also lost on the way when people prefer texting or e-mailing. When you hear a person’s voice you can immediately if he or she is happy or sad, you know her mood, motivation and all the other emotional information that might influence the content of her speech. Psychologists sometimes call e-mail, text messages and other written correspondence “cold media” because they hide a person’s real feelings. But these new methods of communication also have their advantages because they are less time consumers than other means of communication and you are more likely to get a response when you text than when you call. Though written electronic correspondence doesn’t give people the benefit of a person’s voice, they can create the sense of obligation because it is much more demanding in terms of obligation. As the new means of communication become more used, phone calls will be less utile but it is less likely that they will disappear for good.