Generation Text

I remember being resistant to cell phones.

I held off getting my first one until 2003, a time when most of my friends had long ago joined the “cellular revolution.” Maybe I felt as thought mobile phones were a means of control, and you were giving up a degree of freedom to be tethered to them all the time. Maybe I was worried about a recurring payment plan that sounded an awful lot like a great way to dig a debt hole for myself.

The device I initially acquired was bare-bones, more a symbol of a begrudging capitulation to societal pressure than an enthusiastic embrace of emerging tech. Even when I did have the phone, I used it sparingly, terrified of exorbitant bills for a service I couldn't quite fathom why I needed.

Sure, it was useful “in case of an emergency”, but I had lived my whole life up until that point without a cell phone, so I couldn’t understand why I needed one. The only purpose it served was as a telephone; you certainly wouldn’t want to waste time texting.

For those who might not remember, early texting was a Herculean task of pressing a number multiple times to select a single letter. Then, you'd move on to the next letter, located on a different number. It was a laborious process, but gradually, texting began to improve.

If you have memories of these early days of text messaging, let me know!

In my mind, there’s a “before” and “after” point for phones, and it happened (for me, anyway) before the release of the iPhone. T-mobile released a phone called the SideKick 2 came equipped with a flip-out QWERTY pad, enabling me to type nearly two-thirds as quickly as on an actual keyboard. This was something like ten times faster than texting without a QWERTY.

Fast forward a few years, and predictive text and narrow AI significantly improved the efficiency of typing on smartphones. After the intro of the iPhone in 2007, it was a matter of time before nearly all of Generation X was using text messaging as a primary means to communicate, and since then, Boomers have followed suit.

At that point—whether 2005 for me, with the Sidekick; or 2007 for many, with iPhone—texting hit a critical mass. More and more folks were using texts to probe whether a relationship was worth pursuing any further, or to find out exactly where a friend they were supposed to meet was, moment by moment, until the two of them synched up.

These sorts of conversations would have been far too challenging for most people prior to the QWERTY rollout, but it wasn’t just that: almost nobody was texting before the late 2000s, so there just weren’t enough folks to talk to regularly to make it worth doing. If you were an early adopter of texting and used the crap out of it with your friends and family prior to 2005 or so, let me know! I want to hear from you.

For me, texting became a lot more efficient and comfortable than talking on the phone around 2010. If someone didn’t text by then, they had begun to seem like a Luddite.

With enough folks now willing to text one another, more and more folks started adopting the practice, often at the expense of being willing to talk on the phone.

Twenty years ago, I hated text messaging, but mainly because it was slow, unwieldy, and incredibly impractical under most circumstances. The juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.

Fifteen years ago, I was much more interested in texting than talking on the phone, and I sent more than my share of texts from 2005 through at least 2015 or so.

Today, I am all about nuance. Text messages don’t really do an adequate job of allowing you to have an expanded, meaningful conversation—that is, unless you’re willing to spend some time typing little snippets; the intensive text message exchanges I’ve seen are most effective at bringing the conversation forward when it’s treated more like instant messaging used to be treated.

Whenever anyone sends me a text that requires more than a few seconds of thought—anything beyond “I’ll be five minutes late to today’s Zoom, go ahead and start without me”—I will immediately forward this text to my email. I do nearly all of my serious work in front of the computer.

My hands help me think as I type, something I can’t do with my phone. Perhaps more importantly, I can read whatever it is that I’m composing in its entirety, all at once (up to a few paragraphs, anyway) on a bigger screen.

If you do serious thinking with your phone, let me know about that, too! Different strokes for different folks.

In a way, I feel like I’ve created a monster. I really, really wanted everyone to start texting back in the late “aughts.” By 2010, I had begun to convince folks to do this.

These days, I view texting as a good alternative to a quick phone call, but not a great place to have a serious, meaningful conversation. If someone sends me a text that bothers me or sends up red flags, I want to talk more in-depth immediately by way of email or a phone call, not dive into a deep rabbit hole that’s going to require my clumsy, huge thumbs to try to slide the right letters into their configuration.

Voice-to-text folks, I can hear your objection, but let me dismiss it with a wave of my hand: more often than not, when I receive a text, I’m not in any sort of position to talk out loud into my phone. Whatever the person sent me is probably confidential, and I’m not interested in broadcasting anything confidential out into the world with my voice.

Oddly, I’ve come full-circle on my views on texting, in a way. The reasons why have changed a lot, though. In 2003, I was terrified of being charged money I couldn’t afford (there was no such thing as unlimited texting back then, so you often just paid for every one you sent), and I didn’t want to be tethered by my technology.

Today, the only thing I’m afraid of is a frustrating time-suck.

This piece is a little more personal today. Usually, I try to connect my experiences to the wider world, but this was more introspective. Let’s keep it that way: tell me a little about your own experiences with texting. Do you text more now than you used to? Do you prefer another method of communication for different types of conversations?

Let’s talk, but here on Substack, please. No texts.