We're a Texting Family Now

I have shared in the past that our family had chosen to not do all the mainstream technological things that it seems most American families are doing. One thing was our resistance to having texting on our mobile phones.

So now we have joined the texting crew.

We resisted due to not wanting to have the additional expense in our budget. We did not want to be intruded upon; I didn't want to be pestered. I didn't want my kids faces shoved into their mobile phones texting instead of having actual verbal discussions with their friends. I didn't want other people's kids interrupting our family life with beeps and blips demanding attention right then and there. I also didn't feel that my kids needed one more distraction from doing something else that was more important.

Now the sport teams and the Boy Scout Troop use texting to do urgent communications. It is getting to where everyone thinks everyone has texting and they think everyone is checking it nonstop.
So we caved in. Lucky for us texting is less expensive now, especially for the family plan, and it is unlimited so no one has to count messages. Good thing because in the fist week my twelve year old sent over 450 texts.

So far my older son at age 14.5 barely uses it. That's also what he does with the mobile phone. And so far the just turned twelve year old is using it nonstop, just as he does with other social networking via Skype, telephone, xBox360 and everything else.

Texting has been convenient for us so far. We are conducting real estate business of buying and selling a home via text messaging, which seems surreal. People that we deal with no longer want to send an email to say something, they text it. It is actually faster and easier to write via text than using an email program. And there is no point to sending people emails if their new way of using it is to read emails once a day only because they look at texts constantly and figure if it's urgent you'd text it.

So far it has not been intrusive to our family, but perhaps it all depends on how others in your social circle use the technology. If you have a bunch of small talking overly-chatty friends you will probably get bombarded by texts, but we're not.