Texting is better than Instant Messaging

I thank you for your response I would like to point out that there are usually alot of things to discuss about when you are making plans with your friends and the current costs of phone calls and text messages point to a phone call being the best way to plan at the lowest cost. I gave IMing as another option because it is free and you can plan your night fast and easy using it. To say texting is faster is a joke. Even with computer like keyboards the response time and difficulty of reading messages you have typed earlier make it a much slower process. Instant messaging is simply set out better. You can easily look at what you wrote 10 minutes ago simply by scorlling up or down and the response time is minimal. You have made the statement "People who have down time at work that don't have access to computers can have important conversations without being disruptive, and with texting, you don't have to worry about someone being on to contact them immediately. " However my research has found that "A study published in 2008 in the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication by Garrett and Danziger found that workers who used instant messaging on the job reported less interruption than colleagues who did not. [5] Research showed that instant messaging was often used as a substitute for other, more disruptive forms of communication such as the telephone, e-mail, and face-to-face conversations. " . http://en.wikipedia.org... As we see text messaging is not the only less disruptive form of communication in the workplace. As for your comment that you don't have to be signed in to contact someone, this may be true; however, this only takes a second and happens automatically on most computers. Text messages, on the other hand, are limited by how much money you have to spend, whether or not the person you are trying to contacts mobile is on in the first place, and if you and the other person both have a good connection. I'm shore I am not the only person who cannot send a text message because of low connectivity or because I have no credit at the most inappropriate of times. You quoted "As of June 2008, over 75 Billion text messages are sent every month compared to just 18 Billion in December 2006. " Graph from the previous link: . http://cellsigns.com...... These statistics are extremely misleading. Remember we are talking about text messages per year not the number of people text messaging. Each person may send thousands of text messages per year or send 20000 Instant messages. Therefore we should look at the amount of people taking part in each form of communication. Millions of people are registered on the many chat sites. Windows live messenger itself had 330 million active users at the start of June 2009. . http://en.wikipedia.org... You have not made any note that we are talking about text messaging and IMing at this point in time so I must assume you are talking about text messaging and IMing independent of time. Yes your right, technology does increase and as technology increases computers become smaller and more efficient. Are you really under the delusion that people will spend the time and money texting when soon they will be able to buy a cheap easy to carry computer and instant message for free? Who in the world would make the ridiculous choice of texting over instant messaging when there are so many Benefits of using it? We all know that we are heading towards a time when most people will own a small compact yet powerful computer capable of doing the jobs of both the mobile phone and the computer. Do you honestly think that while I talk in real time with anyone i want whenever I want across a worldwide instant messaging network, that you will still be texting? This is why I have made the statement that texting is a dying communication medium. It may not be at this exact moment, but it is only a matter of time. So let's look at the overall benefits of IMing 1. It is less disruptive then other forms of communication in the workplace 2. It is cheaper than texting 3. As technology increases it will be easier and more efficient than texting 4. You can have free flowing conversations in close to real time rather than the start and stop ones you can have through text messaging. 5. You can send documents to other IM users without having to stop IMing 6. Its easy to plan for occasions with friends using IMing than text messaging 7. You must have someones number to text them. Whereas Instant messaging caters to not only those who want to talk to their friends but also those who want to make friends and form relationships. It is obvious that increased technology all over the world will only increase the incidence of instant messaging as it is superior in the several ways that I have stated. The future of text based communications belongs to instant messaging.