#45: Text at Your Age

The Story Behind Text at Your Age

SMS messaging was first used back in 1992, when Neil Papwroth used a PC to send a text message (“Merry Christmas”) to his co-worker miles away. If only Neil knew then just how popular texting would later become.

But it wasn’t a hit from the start. There was a time when texting wasn’t the go-to form of communicating. Back in 1995, telecommunication customers only sent 0.4 text messages a month. You have to remember that texts used to cost a lot and were slow and different, people didn’t really get it. Phones were for talking on, many people said! Why would you be typing on a phone, you should be speaking into it. Oh, how times have changed. Now more people text than talk, and it isn’t even close. US smartphone users send and receive five times more text messages than they make and receive calls. Americans spend 26 minutes a day texting, compared to 21 minutes a day calling. So texting is the preferred way to communicate with others and it isn’t going away anytime soon. It’s wild to think of all those years ago when texting was seen as a hassle. Now anytime someone calls you, you say to yourself “Couldn’t you have just texted this to me instead?”

Plain Text Description of Text at Your Age

An elderly stick figure explains to a child with a bluetooth headset on, "Sonny, when I was your age, to communicate with others we had to pick up the phone and actually text 'em!".