[texting tirade]

Clarification: this post is a tirade about texting, not a tirade via texting.

Now, I love to text. Sometimes you are in a situation where information is needed but you cannot talk on the phone, so you text. Maybe you need to share a quick tidbit of information, but its not so overly important that you need a response immediately, so you text. Sometimes you just feel like texting, so you text. I am perfectly fine with that. What I am not okay with though is the current trend I see in my fellow college-aged peers of using texting as an excuse for good manners. For instance, that image on the left is one of the top shared bumper stickers on Facebook at the moment. Since when has an awkward situation ever been alleviated by texting? Not only does it make it more awkward since one person is now actively ignoring the other, but the situation will still be there once you're done texting. The beauty and the curse of texting: it usually takes a short amount of time.

Another example of this, the one that really bugs me and I try my best to not ever do myself, is when you are having a face-to-face conversation with someone and they start texting mid-convo. This usually results in the texter not paying attention to the person in front of them and having to ask for whatever was said while they answered their life-or-death important text message to be repeated. I understand that texts are important and should be checked as soon as they can upon arrival, but at least excuse yourself from any live conversations you may currently be involved in so that you don't appear like a self-absorbed jerk.

Maybe its just me, but I think that my generation, THE texting generation, needs to figure out how to balance real life interactions with those fed through their QWERTY keyboards...