The Personalities Behind The Screens: Who Texts and Why?

Communication is one of technologies most important and widely used aspect. Everyone nowadays uses a phone daily and most carry a mobile phone around with them. Many people also use instant messaging systems for quick responses or texts for slower chatting. It is not surprising that different forms of technological communication appeal to different types of people.

The study in article 3 made many claims in their discussion concerning who uses what technologies to communicate. The article found that disagreeable individuals use calls and IM more often, rather than face-to-face interaction. It makes sense that they don't meet people head on or text because, normally, disagreeable people don't like confrontation. Calling and IMing allows for a sense of detachment while also allowing quick responses and long conversations to express their (disagreeing) thoughts. Texting lacks that conversation appeal as people can respond whenever they want without a true obligation. It is much more believable to say "my class started and I couldn't respond" in a text rather than an IM.

The study also proclaimed extraverts use more texting and neurotics use IM and texting very often. Extraverts like talking to as many people as possible while moving as fast as possible, which makes texting an obvious choice. Calling is too exclusive and time wasting and IMing involves staying in one location, which is not optimal for social butterflies. Neurotics both text and IM because they need to be on top of things. Calling wastes time, whereas a combination of texting and IMing allows for optimal time management.

Finally, the study concluded that those with high self-esteem (and high neuroticism) have stronger mobile phone addictive tendencies and disagreeable people with low self-esteem have stronger IM tendencies. Neurotics with self-esteem would use the phone more often because that provides a slightly personal form of communication, in between that of actual face-to-face interaction and secluded IMing. Texting and calling someone gives a better understanding of another's feelings. Disagreeable individuals with low self-esteem would definitely use IM because it allows for quick responses with no confrontation at all. One can be angry at another, but, in quick messages, a lot of the anger is lost in translation. Despite all the findings, there is a fair amount of variability that personality can't cover due to situational discrepancies and other environmental differences.

The study is far from complete though- such a broad study must be carefully examined and further researched; it would be best if the data could also enter a qualitative style, as that would account for further personal matters. It is also important to recognize that personality and self-esteem are not strong predictors of tech use; other areas must be examined, such as control perceptions, to develop a comprehensive method of diagnosing communicative tech addictions.

Although there are many controversies on the subject, the use of the term "addiction" is often approved, especially because those who suddenly can't access their cell phones or internet often become irritable, show signs of craving, and even lose control of themselves. A "research paper, published in 2007 in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology by a psychiatrist at Tel Aviv University, recommended that Internet addiction be regarded as an extreme disorder on par with gambling, sex addiction and kleptomania" (http://www.livescience.com/technology/080125-tech-addicts.html). In this study, "addiction" is replaced with "addictive tendencies" in order to dispel any arguments over the term; "addictive tendencies" conjures the thought that communicative technology is something one relies on often, but remains slightly below that of a true addiction. Personally, I don't think tech should be considered an addiction. We use tech every second of the day; for example, while I'm typing this thread, I'm watching the Olympics on my high-definition TV and listening to music on my stereo- 3 technologies at once. Despite this constant usage, most everyone can survive without communicative technologies for days on end, though people feel bad about it because they miss out on things beyond their field of vision. In rare cases, people can become quite angry when unable to use texting or IM to communicate, but I believe that these cases can be explained by other reasons beyond addiction.

This study, although somewhat short, does get across many key facts that I agree with; it does an adequate job supporting its claims and research. I agree with the conclusion dealing with personality traits, but I wish it went into a little more depth. There's a lot left unexplained.