Why Text Messaging Industry is completely Broken…
I was at a conference last month where a team of panel judges were investigating the consequences of text messaging on our society. It was really heartfelt to see that texting is dominating teenagers and adolscents as the only medium of communication at an alarming rate. This is also leading them to show withdrawal symptoms elevated to depression and anxiety in the growing up years. I deeply care about this topic and wanted to bring a perspective on how text communication is broken with serious flaws and what needs to happen to fix it.
Since old time and era, people use letters or love letters to communicate to each other, which in the modern date and form has been renamed as Text messaging. As i looked more deeper, I realized text messaging has not been re-invented in the last 15 yrs. You send few words and get few words back. It is exactly how Robots communicate. This was quite alarming!
We live in most connected world than ever before and we have different modes of communication to our loved ones.
For many people, communication in virtual world can be broadly categorized into 3 major sectors:
- Text Message/Chat
- Voice or VoIP (Phone call, FaceTime or Skype etc)
- Social Media (like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter)
Interestingly the market share of each of these sectors can be described below:
Text messaging is a most dominant and growing source of communication between stronger ties.
People specifically in the age group between 13–35 tend to message each other more than older individuals. In one research study, over 90% reported texting to connect to their partner at least once a day, sometime 30 times during the day. If you come to think about it, we don’t share 30 photos, or talk for 30 minutes on phone but we have no problem texting each other 100 messages every day during or after school or office hours. Infact we don’t even listen to 100 songs in a day via iPod.
30 Billion Text Messages are sent Every day on Whatsapp alone
This is huge!
Does that mean texting is just a supplement to regular face to face to communication? Understanding why people text each other is a first step in understanding human relationship and the need for staying connected with its advantages and consequences
Why Texting dominates market share and mind share of people?
Text messaging is a very powerful medium of communication and it has had a profound impact on our generation of all ages. It removes some of the barriers that make face-to-face conversations awkward. Mainly text messaging provides following benefits:
- It does require for spontaneous wit and users can think and carefully craft their message before responding
- It is easy, quick and addictive.
Text messaging not only helps the nervous but can also benefit uncertain situations or nervous introductions. It is more casual approach of communication and safer way to figure out what the other person in thinking about you.
Why Current Messaging Solutions FAIL?
Problems with Texting
Texting is often used in dating and relationships management. But studies have shown that although it helps in relationships it come with dissatisfaction in relationships. Text messaging is often fraught with confusion. Without our non-verbal signals, messages can easily be misinterpreted or misconstrued, leading to uncertainty and anxiety. Further since the communication is not face to face, it is hard to convey exactly your feelings into words specially in complicated relationships.
Infact, 1 in 5 breakups happen over text message, despite the fact that most people think its an unacceptable way to end relationship. With text messaging the benefit of technology to avoid face to face conversations brings its own discomfort and disadvantages. These are the barriers today to have better communication just like in real life.
Frustrations
This clearly is a signal that text messaging ,chat and other major forms of digital communication are insufficient and literally handicapped to provide a more reliable and human way of communication to each other. So what is missing? Is it healthy to text in a relationship?
From the outside it looks like the rules of texting are very simple, but the absence of expectations may cause conflicts or disappointments in relationships. There is no established etiquette for acceptable message length, response time or frequency of interaction. So its left to the user to derive these cues and etiquettes based on their past experience from the people they know. During the early stages of relationship, texting is an ideal way to reduce anxiety and uncertainty however once the connection is established, additional forms of communication are needed including real face to face communication to avoid mis-interpretation or ambiguity within messages.
While emoticons may help express feelings, people don’t get quality interactions needed to maintain relationships.
Why Affective Communication needs to exist and bridge the gap?
Emotion recognition in text is just one the several dimensions of the task of making the computers make sense of and respond to emotions. The word “affect” is often used interchangeably with “emotion” in the literature. Human emotion can be sensed from such cues as facial expression, gestures, speech and writings. Research in emotion has focused on all these aspects This area of research is collectively also referred to as “Affective Communication”.
The future of communication is not going to be text alone. It is seriously handicapped with little to no information about the person’s level of emotions, expressions, body language and therefore this particular field needs reinvention that has not been done in last 15 yrs.
