Text Messaging and Relationships

In 2008, 95.4 billions text messanges were sent by United States mobile users. In the same period 648 million texts were sent a day, and 42 million texts per hour. Today texting has become a new technology in itself. All cell phones plans come with some sort of texting plan. Texting has helped to shape and enhance interpersonal relationships. All ages, have started texting to talk to friends and family. It has become a fact that Americans text more than they talk on the phone.

For me personally, I would much rather text certain people in my life then talk to them on the phone. It just seems so much easier and faster for me to text someone, and I know that they are much more likely to text me back then they are to call me back if I happen to call them and they don't answer. Some people see text messaging as a huge benefit to their relationships, and even say that texting saved their relationship because they were able to communicate more. According to the Mobile Data Association, 74% of women say they have used text messaing in the last 26 minutes. (I would have to agree, as I am writing this post and I am texting a friend), and 26% of men said they had.

So the big question so many people ask is "should I build a relationship through texting?" Here are three tips to one should use if they are going to build a dating relationship through texting:

1- quick love notes are better than long 160 character love notes. Sending a quick "I was just thinking about you" is a lot more impactful than "hey, what's going on. I didn't have much going on right now so I decided to send you a message." That's just a bunch of blah blah blah and it has no feeling to it.
2- - ask engaging questions that will make the person get involved in your text message instead of having them mindlessly sending something back to you. Texting is great to play off each other and build attraction. The problem is that some people just don't know how it works and their messages don't go anywhere. A poor text message is anything that doesn't move the conversation along. Remember to ask questions or have leading comments like "you were suppose to be there..."
3- - Flirt, flirt, flirt. You must leave the normal friend conversations and send lines that trigger emotions and create attraction. You do this by role playing, bantering, playing hard to get, taking the person on an emotional roller coaster, etc....

Being able to text in my life has helped so many of my interpersonal relationships to grow. One in particular is with my dad. My parents are divorced. My dad and I dont get the chance to talk to eachother on the phone as much as we would like because we are both so busy. My dad recently learned how to text. We text eachother almost everyday, asking eachother questions that we wouldnt normally ask one another if we were talking on the phone. Texting eachother has made our father-daughter relationship to grow significantly. A survery done by Samusung suggests that over half of American teens and their parents say that textinng eachother has improved their relationship It’s rare that technology actually gets credit for improving parent-teen relations rather than serving as another generational divide, but Samsung claims text messaging has actually moved the two groups closer together. According to a survey commissioned by the Japanese mobile giant, teens report better relationships with their parents since picking up texting.

Text messaging helps to "break the ice" in a relationship. I think that you can learn a lot about somebody by texting because its so easy to do, and almost everyone now knows or is learning how to text to stay in contact with friends, family, children, etc... Texting helps to enhance interpersonal relationships in so many ways. It makes you think about how have we survived without this new technology.