![SMS composition on feature phone](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/SMS_composition_on_feature_phone.png)
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of
mobile device
A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...
s,
desktop
A desktop traditionally refers to:
* The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor)
Desktop may refer to various compu ...
s/
laptop
A laptop, laptop computer, or notebook computer is a small, portable personal computer (PC) with a screen and alphanumeric keyboard. Laptops typically have a clam shell form factor with the screen mounted on the inside of the upper li ...
s, or another type of compatible computer. Text messages may be sent over a
cellular network
A cellular network or mobile network is a communication network where the link to and from end nodes is wireless. The network is distributed over land areas called "cells", each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver (typically thre ...
, or may also be sent via an
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
connection.
The term originally referred to messages sent using the
Short Message Service
Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...
(SMS). It has grown beyond alphanumeric text to include multimedia messages using the
Multimedia Messaging Service
Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is a standard way to send messages that include multimedia content to and from a mobile phone over a cellular network. Users and providers may refer to such a message as a PXT, a picture message, or a multimedia ...
(MMS) containing digital images, videos, and sound content, as well as ideograms known as
emoji
An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversat ...
(
happy faces, sad faces, and other icons), and
instant messenger
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and tri ...
applications (usually the term is used when on mobile devices).
Text messages are used for personal, family, business and social purposes. Governmental and non-governmental organizations use text messaging for communication between colleagues. In the 2010s, the sending of short informal messages became an accepted part of many cultures, as happened earlier with
email
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
ing. This makes texting a quick and easy way to communicate with friends, family and colleagues, including in contexts where a
call
Call or Calls may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Games
* Call, a type of betting in poker
* Call, in the game of contract bridge, a bid, pass, double, or redouble in the bidding stage
Music and dance
* Call (band), from Lahore, Paki ...
would be impolite or inappropriate (e.g., calling very late at night or when one knows the other person is busy with family or work activities). Like e-mail and
voicemail
A voicemail system (also known as voice message or voice bank) is a computer-based system that allows users and subscribers to exchange personal voice messages; to select and deliver voice information; and to process transactions relating to ind ...
and unlike calls (in which the caller hopes to speak directly with the recipient), texting does not require the caller and recipient to both be free at the same moment; this permits communication even between busy individuals. Text messages can also be used to interact with automated systems, for example, to order products or services from
e-commerce
E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...
websites, or to participate in online contests. Advertisers and service providers use
direct text marketing to send messages to mobile users about promotions, payment due dates, and other notifications instead of using
postal mail,
email
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
, or
voicemail
A voicemail system (also known as voice message or voice bank) is a computer-based system that allows users and subscribers to exchange personal voice messages; to select and deliver voice information; and to process transactions relating to ind ...
.
Terminology
The service is referred to by different
colloquialism
Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the style (sociolinguistics), linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom norm ...
s depending on the region. It may simply be referred to as a "text" in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines, an "SMS" in most of mainland Europe, or an "MMS" or "SMS" in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The sender of a text message is commonly referred to as a "texter".
History
The
electrical telegraph
Electrical telegraphs were point-to-point text messaging systems, primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most widely used of a number of early messaging systems ...
systems, developed in the early 19th century, used electrical signals to send text messages. In the late 19th century, the
wireless telegraphy
Wireless telegraphy or radiotelegraphy is transmission of text messages by radio waves, analogous to electrical telegraphy using cables. Before about 1910, the term ''wireless telegraphy'' was also used for other experimental technologies for ...
was developed using
radio waves
Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, typically with frequencies of 300 gigahertz ( GHz) and below. At 300 GHz, the corresponding wavelength is 1 mm (s ...
.
In 1933, the German ''
Reichspost
''Reichspost'' (; "Imperial Mail") was the name of the postal service of Germany from 1866 to 1945.
''Deutsche Reichspost''
Upon the out break of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the break-up of the German Confederation in the Peace of ...
'' (
Reich
''Reich'' (; ) is a German language, German noun whose meaning is analogous to the meaning of the English word "realm"; this is not to be confused with the German adjective "reich" which means "rich". The terms ' (literally the "realm of an emp ...
postal service) introduced the first "
telex
The telex network is a station-to-station switched network of teleprinters similar to a Public switched telephone network, telephone network, using telegraph-grade connecting circuits for two-way text-based messages. Telex was a major method of ...
" service.
The University of Hawaii began using radio to send digital information as early as 1971, using
ALOHAnet
ALOHAnet, also known as the ALOHA System, or simply ALOHA, was a pioneering computer networking system developed at the University of Hawaii. ALOHAnet became operational in June 1971, providing the first public demonstration of a wireless packe ...
.
Friedhelm Hillebrand
Friedhelm Hillebrand is a German engineer who has been influential in setting mobile telecommunications standards. Hillebrand is one of the inventors of the SMS, as he and Frenchman Bernard Ghillebaert created the concept for the service in 1984. ...
conceptualised SMS in 1984 while working for
Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom AG (; short form often just Telekom, DTAG or DT; stylised as ·T·) is a German telecommunications company that is headquartered in Bonn and is the largest telecommunications provider in Europe by revenue. Deutsche Telekom was ...
. Sitting at a typewriter at home, Hillebrand typed out random sentences and counted every letter, number, punctuation, and space. Almost every time, the messages contained fewer than 160 characters, thus giving the basis for the limit one could type via text messaging. With
Bernard Ghillebaert
Bernard Ghillebaert (born 17 January 1952) is a French telecommunications engineer and businessman, and former Chief Executive of Orange UK. He is importantly known for setting the telecommunication standards for text messaging in 1985.
Early life ...
of
France Télécom
Orange S.A. (), formerly France Télécom S.A. (stylized as france telecom) is a French multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications corporation. It has 266 million customers worldwide and employs 89,000 people in France, and 5 ...
, he developed a proposal for the
GSM
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...
(Groupe Spécial Mobile) meeting in February 1985 in Oslo. The first technical solution evolved in a GSM subgroup under the leadership of Finn Trosby. It was further developed under the
leadership
Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group or organization to "lead", influence or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. The word "leadership" often gets view ...
of Kevin Holley and Ian Harris (see
Short Message Service
Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...
). SMS forms an integral part of
Signalling System No. 7
Signalling System No. 7 (SS7) is a set of telephony signaling protocols developed in 1975, which is used to set up and tear down telephone calls in most parts of the world-wide public switched telephone network (PSTN). The protocol also perfo ...
(SS7). Under SS7, it is a "state" with a 160 character data, coded in the ITU-T "T.56" text format, that has a "sequence lead in" to determine different language codes and may have special character codes that permit, for example, sending simple graphs as text. This was part of ISDN (
Integrated Services Digital Network
Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. W ...
) and since
GSM
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...
is based on this, it made its way to the mobile phone. Messages could be sent and received on ISDN phones, and these can send SMS to any GSM phone. The possibility of doing something is one thing, implementing it another, but systems existed from 1988 that sent SMS messages to mobile phones (compare
ND-NOTIS).
SMS messaging was used for the first time on 3 December 1992, at the Three Tuns Public House in Reading, Berkshire when
Neil Papworth
Neil Papworth (born 1969) is a British software architect, designer and developer. He is known as the sender of the first ever text message (also known as SMS message) in 1992.
Personal life
Neil Papworth was born on 28 December 1969 in Read ...
, a 22-year-old test engineer for
Sema Group
Sema Group plc was an Anglo-French IT services company. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It was acquired by Schlumberger in 2001.
History
The Company was founded in 1988 by the merger of t ...
in the UK (now
Airwide Solutions
Airwide Solutions was a privately held (majority shareholder smac, partners Germany), but United States–based mobile messaging and wireless internet infrastructure company. It was acquired by Mavenir Systems in May 2011.
The company was founde ...
), used a personal computer to send the text message "
Merry Christmas" via the
Vodafone
Vodafone Group Public limited company, plc () is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Telephone company, telecommunications company. Its registered office and Headquarters, global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It ...
network to the phone of Richard Jarvis,
who was at a party in
Newbury, Berkshire
Newbury is a market town in the county of Berkshire, England, and is home to the administrative headquarters of West Berkshire Council. The town centre around its large market square retains a rare medieval Cloth Hall, an adjoining half timbere ...
, which had been organized to celebrate the event. Modern SMS text messaging is usually messaging from one mobile phone to another. Finnish
Radiolinja
Radiolinja was a Finnish GSM operator founded on September 19, 1988. On March 27, 1991, the world's first GSM phone call was made on Radiolinja's network. The network was opened for commercial use on July 1, 1991.
Radiolinja's slogan was ''So tha ...
became the first network to offer a commercial person-to-person SMS text messaging service in 1994. When Radiolinja's domestic competitor, Telecom Finland (now part of
TeliaSonera
Telia Company AB is a Swedish multinational telecommunications company and mobile network operator present in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Telia also owns TV4 Media which includes TV4 in Sweden, MTV Oy in F ...
) also launched SMS text messaging in 1995 and the two networks offered cross-network SMS functionality, Finland became the first nation where SMS text messaging was offered on a competitive as well as on a commercial basis. GSM was allowed in the United States and the radio frequencies were blocked and awarded to US "Carriers" to use US technology. Hence there is no "development" in the US in mobile messaging service. The GSM in the US had to use a frequency allocated for
private communication services (PCS) – what the
ITU
The International Telecommunication Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Unio ...
frequency régime had blocked for DECT –
Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications
Digital enhanced cordless telecommunications (Digital European cordless telecommunications), usually known by the acronym DECT, is a standard primarily used for creating cordless telephone systems. It originated in Europe, where it is the common ...
– 1000-feet range picocell, but survived. American Personal Communications (APC), the first GSM carrier in America, provided the first text-messaging service in the United States. Sprint Telecommunications Venture, a partnership of Sprint Corp. and three large cable-TV companies, owned 49 percent of APC. The Sprint venture was the largest single buyer at a government-run spectrum auction that raised $7.7 billion in 2005 for PCS licenses. APC operated under the brand name of Sprint Spectrum and launched its service on 15 November 1995, in Washington, D.C. and in Baltimore, Maryland. Vice President
Al Gore
Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic Part ...
in Washington, D.C. made the initial phone-call to launch the network, calling Mayor
Kurt Schmoke
Kurt Lidell Schmoke (born December 1, 1949) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 47th mayor of Baltimore, Maryland, from 1987 to 1999, the first African American to be elected to the post. He is the current president of the University ...
in Baltimore.
Initial growth of text messaging worldwide was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0.4 messages per GSM customer per month. One factor in the slow take-up of SMS was that operators were slow to set up charging systems, especially for prepaid subscribers, and to eliminate billing fraud, which was possible by changing
SMSC settings on individual handsets to use the SMSCs of other operators. Over time, this issue was eliminated by switch billing instead of billing at the SMSC and by new features within SMSCs to allow blocking of foreign mobile users sending messages through it. SMS is available on a wide range of networks, including
3G networks. However, not all text-messaging systems use SMS; some notable alternate implementations of the concept include
J-Phone
is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs th ...
's
SkyMail and
NTT Docomo's
Short Mail
Short may refer to:
Places
* Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon
* Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community
* Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place
People
* Short (surname)
* List of people known as ...
, both in Japan. E-mail messaging from phones, as popularized by NTT Docomo's
i-mode
NTT DoCoMo's i-mode is a mobile internet (distinct from wireless internet) service popular in Japan. Unlike Wireless Application Protocols, i-mode encompasses a wider variety of internet standards, including web access, e-mail, and the packet- ...
and the RIM
BlackBerry
The blackberry is an edible fruit produced by many species in the genus ''Rubus'' in the family Rosaceae, hybrids among these species within the subgenus ''Rubus'', and hybrids between the subgenera ''Rubus'' and ''Idaeobatus''. The taxonomy of ...
, also typically use standard mail protocols such as
SMTP
The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typical ...
over
TCP/IP
The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...
. text messaging was the most widely used mobile data service, with 74% of all mobile phone users worldwide, or 2.4 billion out of 3.3 billion phone subscribers, at the end of 2007 being active users of the Short Message Service. In countries such as Finland, Sweden, and Norway, over 85% of the population use SMS. The European average is about 80%, and North America is rapidly catching up with over 60% active users of SMS . The largest average usage of the service by mobile phone subscribers occurs in the Philippines, with an average of 27 texts sent per day per subscriber.
Uses
![iPhone Text Message Amber Alert 1882467856 o](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/IPhone_Text_Message_Amber_Alert_1882467856_o.jpg)
Text messaging is most often used between private mobile phone users, as a substitute for voice calls in situations where voice communication is impossible or undesirable (e.g., during a school class or a work meeting). Texting is also used to communicate very brief messages, such as informing someone that you will be late or reminding a friend or colleague about a meeting. As with e-mail, informality and brevity have become an accepted part of text messaging. Some text messages such as SMS can also be used for the remote control of home appliances. It is widely used in
domotics
Home automation or domotics is building automation for a home, called a smart home or smart house. A home automation system will monitor and/or control home attributes such as lighting, climate, entertainment systems, and appliances. It ma ...
systems. Some amateurs have also built their own systems to control (some of) their appliances via SMS. Other methods such as group messaging, which was patented in 2012 by the GM of Andrew Ferry, Devin Peterson, Justin Cowart, Ian Ainsworth, Patrick Messinger, Jacob Delk, Jack Grande, Austin Hughes, Brendan Blake, and Brooks Brasher are used to involve more than two people into a text messaging conversation. A
Flash SMS is a type of text message that appears directly on the main screen without user interaction and is not automatically stored in the inbox. It can be useful in cases such as an emergency (e.g.,
fire alarm
A fire alarm system warns people when smoke, fire, carbon monoxide or other fire-related or general notification emergency, emergencies are detected. These alarms may be activated automatically from smoke detectors and heat detectors or may also ...
) or
confidentiality
Confidentiality involves a set of rules or a promise usually executed through confidentiality agreements that limits the access or places restrictions on certain types of information.
Legal confidentiality
By law, lawyers are often required ...
(e.g.,
one-time password
A one-time password (OTP), also known as a one-time PIN, one-time authorization code (OTAC) or dynamic password, is a password that is valid for only one login session or transaction, on a computer system or other digital device. OTPs avoid seve ...
).
Short message services are developing very rapidly throughout the world. SMS is particularly popular in Europe, Asia (excluding Japan; see below), United States, Australia, and New Zealand and is also gaining influence in Africa. Popularity has grown to a sufficient extent that the term ''texting'' (used as a
verb
A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
meaning the act of mobile phone users sending short messages back and forth) has entered the common lexicon. Young Asians consider SMS as the most popular mobile phone application. Fifty percent of American teens send fifty text messages or more per day, making it their most frequent form of communication. In China, SMS is very popular and has brought service providers significant profit (18 billion short messages were sent in 2001).
It is a very influential and powerful tool in the Philippines, where the average user sends 10–12 text messages a day. The Philippines alone sends on average over 1 billion text messages a day,
more than the annual average SMS volume of the countries in Europe, and even China and India. SMS is hugely popular in India, where youngsters often exchange many text messages, and companies provide alerts, infotainment, news, cricket scores updates, railway/airline booking, mobile billing, and banking services on SMS.
Similarly, in 2008, text messaging played a primary role in the implication of former Detroit Mayor
Kwame Kilpatrick
Kwame Malik Kilpatrick (born June 8, 1970) is an American former politician who served as the 72nd mayor of Detroit from 2002 to 2008. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously represented the 9th district in the Michigan House of Repres ...
in an SMS sex scandal.
Short messages are particularly popular among young urbanites. In many markets, the service is comparatively cheap. For example, in Australia, a message typically costs between
A$0.20 and $0.25 to send (some prepaid services charge $0.01 between their own phones), compared with a voice call, which costs somewhere between $0.40 and $2.00 per minute (commonly charged in half-minute blocks). The service is enormously profitable to the service providers. At a typical length of only 190 bytes (including protocol overhead), more than 350 of these messages per minute can be transmitted at the same data rate as a usual voice call (9 kbit/s). There are also free SMS services available, which are often sponsored, that allow sending and receiving SMS from a PC connected to the Internet. Mobile service providers in New Zealand, such as
Vodafone
Vodafone Group Public limited company, plc () is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Telephone company, telecommunications company. Its registered office and Headquarters, global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It ...
and
Telecom NZ, provide up to 2000 SMS messages for NZ$10 per month. Users on these plans send on average 1500 SMS messages every month. Text messaging has become so popular that advertising agencies and advertisers are now jumping into the text messaging business. Services that provide bulk text message sending are also becoming a popular way for clubs, associations, and advertisers to reach a group of opt-in subscribers quickly.
Research suggests that Internet-based mobile messaging will have grown to equal the popularity of SMS in 2013, with nearly 10 trillion messages being sent through each technology.
["Mobile and SMS interaction service conducts study that says that IP-based mobile messaging will be just as popular as traditional SMS"]
mobile news, 23 January 2013.Retrieved: 23 January 2013 Services such as
Facebook Messenger
Messenger is a proprietary instant messaging app and platform developed by Meta Platforms. Originally developed as Facebook Chat in 2008, the company revamped its messaging service in 2010, released standalone iOS and Android apps in 2011, and ...
,
Snapchat
Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before the ...
,
WhatsApp
WhatsApp (also called WhatsApp Messenger) is an internationally available freeware, cross-platform, centralized instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by American company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook). It allows us ...
and
Viber
Viber, or Rakuten Viber, is a cross-platform voice over IP (VoIP) and instant messaging (IM) software application owned by Japanese multinational company Rakuten, provided as freeware for the Google Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS ...
have led to a decline in the use of SMS in parts of the world.
Research has shown that women are more likely than men to use
emoticon
An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for "emotion icon", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a ...
s in text messages.
Applications
Microblogging
Of many texting trends, a system known as microblogging has surfaced, which consists of a miniaturized blog, inspired mainly by people's tendency to jot down informal thoughts and post them online. They consist of websites like
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
and its Chinese equivalent
Weibo (微博). As of 2016, both of these websites were popular.
Emergency services
In some countries, text messages can be used to contact emergency services. In the UK, text messages can be used to call emergency services only after registering with the emergency SMS service. This service is primarily aimed at people who, because of disability, are unable to make a voice call. It has recently been promoted as a means for walkers and climbers to call emergency services from areas where a voice call is not possible due to low signal strength. In the US, there is a move to require both traditional operators and
Over-the-top
An over-the-top (OTT) media service is a media service offered directly to viewers via the Internet. OTT bypasses cable, broadcast, and satellite television platforms: the types of companies that traditionally act as controllers or distributors ...
messaging providers to support texting to 911. In Asia, SMS is used for tsunami warnings and in Europe, SMS is used to inform individuals of imminent disasters. Since the location of a handset is known, systems can alert everyone in an area that the events have made impossible to pass through e.g. an avalanche. A similar system, known as
Emergency Alert An emergency communication system (ECS) is any system (typically computer-based) that is organized for the primary purpose of supporting one-way and two-way communication of emergency information between both individuals and groups of individuals. T ...
, is used in Australia to notify the public of impending disasters through both SMS and landline phone calls. These messages can be sent based on either the location of the phone or the address to which the handset is registered.
Reminders of medical appointments
SMS messages are used in some countries as reminders of medical appointments. Missed outpatient clinic appointments cost the
National Health Service (England)
The National Health Service (NHS) is the Publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare system in England, and one of the four National Health Service systems in the United Kingdom. It is the second largest single-payer healthcare s ...
more than £600 million ($980 million) a year. SMS messages are thought to be more cost-effective, swifter to deliver, and more likely to receive a faster response than letters. A recent study by Sims and colleagues (2012) examined the outcomes of 24,709 outpatient appointments scheduled in mental health services in South-East London. The study found that SMS message reminders could reduce the number of missed psychiatric appointments by 25–28%, representing a potential national yearly saving of over £150 million. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, medical facilities in the United States are using text messaging to coordinate the appointment process, including reminders, cancellations, and safe check-in. US-based cloud
radiology information system A radiological information system (RIS)
is the core system for the electronic management of imaging departments. The major functions of the RIS can include patient scheduling, resource management, examination performance tracking, reporting, result ...
vendor AbbaDox includes this in their patient engagement services.
Commercial uses
Short codes
Short codes
codes, or short numbers, are short digit sequences, significantly shorter than telephone numbers, that are used to address messages in the Multimedia Messaging System (MMS) and short message service (SMS) systems of mobile network operators ...
are special telephone numbers, shorter than full telephone numbers, that can be used to address SMS and MMS messages from mobile phones or fixed phones. There are two types of short codes: dialling and messaging.
Text messaging gateway providers
SMS gateway
An SMS gateway or MMS gateway allows a computer (also known as a Server) to send or receive text messages in the form of Short Message Service (SMS) or Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) transmissions between local and/or international telecommu ...
providers facilitate the SMS traffic between businesses and mobile subscribers, being mainly responsible for carrying mission-critical messages, SMS for enterprises, content delivery and entertainment services involving SMS, e.g., TV voting. Considering SMS messaging performance and cost, as well as the level of text messaging services, SMS gateway providers can be classified as resellers of the text messaging capability of another provider's
SMSC or offering the text messaging capability as an operator of their own SMSC with
SS7. SMS messaging gateway providers can provide gateway-to-mobile (Mobile Terminated–MT) services. Some suppliers can also supply mobile-to-gateway (text-in or Mobile Originated/MO services). Many operate text-in services on short codes or mobile number ranges, whereas others use lower-cost geographic text-in numbers.
Premium content
SMS is widely used for delivering digital content, such as news alerts, financial information, pictures, GIFs, logos and ringtones. Such messages are also known as premium-rated short messages (PSMS). The subscribers are charged extra for receiving this premium content, and the amount is typically divided between the
mobile network operator
A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a wireless service provider, wireless carrier, cellular company, or mobile network carrier, is a provider of wireless communications services that owns or controls all the elements necessary to sell ...
and the
value added service provider (VASP), either through revenue share or a fixed transport fee. Services like
82ASK and
Any Question Answered have used the PSMS model to enable rapid response to mobile consumers' questions, using on-call teams of experts and researchers. In November 2013, amidst complaints about unsolicited charges on bills, major mobile carriers in the US agreed to stop billing for PSMS in 45 states, effectively ending its use in the United States.
Outside the United States, premium short messages are increasingly being used for "real-world" services. For example, some vending machines now allow payment by sending a premium-rated short message, so that the cost of the item bought is added to the user's phone bill or subtracted from the user's prepaid credits. Recently, premium messaging companies have come under fire from consumer groups due to a large number of consumers racking up huge phone bills. A new type of free-premium or hybrid-premium content has emerged with the launch of text-service websites. These sites allow registered users to receive free text messages when items they are interested in go on sale, or when new items are introduced. An alternative to inbound SMS is based on
long number
A long number (e.g. +44 7624 800555 in international notation or 07624 800555 in UK national notation), also known as a virtual mobile number (VMN), dedicated phone number MSISDN or long code, is a reception mechanism used by businesses to receive ...
s (international mobile number format, e.g., +44 7624 805000, or geographic numbers that can handle voice and SMS, e.g., 01133203040
), which can be used in place of short codes or premium-rated short messages for SMS reception in several applications, such as
TV voting, product promotions and campaigns. Long numbers are internationally available, as well as enabling businesses to have their own number, rather than short codes, which are usually shared across a lot of brands. Additionally, long numbers are non-premium inbound numbers.
In workplaces
The use of text messaging for workplace purposes has grown significantly during the mid-2000s (decade). As companies seek competitive advantages, many employees are using new technology, collaborative applications, and real-time messaging such as SMS,
instant messaging
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...
, and mobile communications to connect with teammates and customers. Some practical uses of text messaging include the use of SMS for confirming delivery or other tasks, for instant communication between a service provider and a client (e.g., a
payment card company and a consumer), and for sending alerts. Several universities have implemented a system of texting students and faculties campus alerts. One such example is
Penn State #Redirect Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campu ...
. As text messaging has proliferated in business, so too have regulations governing its use. One regulation specifically governing the use of text messaging in financial-services firms engaged in stocks, equities, and securities trading is ''Regulatory Notice 07-59, Supervision of Electronic Communications, December 2007'', issued to member firms by the
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is a private American corporation that acts as a self-regulatory organization (SRO) that regulates member brokerage firms and exchange markets. FINRA is the successor to the National Associati ...
(FINRA). In Regulatory Notice 07-59, FINRA noted that "electronic communications", "e-mail", and "electronic correspondence" may be used interchangeably and can include such forms of electronic messaging as instant messaging and text messaging. Industry has had to develop new technology to allow companies to archive their employees' text messages.
Security, confidentiality, reliability, and speed of SMS are among the most important guarantees industries such as financial services, energy and commodities trading, health care and enterprises demand in their mission-critical procedures. One way to guarantee such a quality of text messaging lies in introducing SLAs (
Service Level Agreement
A service-level agreement (SLA) is a commitment between a service provider and a customer. Particular aspects of the service – quality, availability, responsibilities – are agreed between the service provider and the service user.
T ...
), which are common in IT contracts. By providing measurable SLAs, corporations can define reliability parameters and set up a high quality of their services. Just one of many SMS applications that have proven highly popular and successful in the financial services industry is mobile receipts. In January 2009,
Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) published the ''Mobile Banking Overview'' for financial institutions in which it discussed the advantages and disadvantages of mobile channel platforms such as Short Message Services (SMS), Mobile Web, Mobile Client Applications, SMS with Mobile Web and Secure SMS.
Mobile interaction services are an alternative way of using SMS in business communications with greater certainty. Typical business-to-business applications are
telematics
Telematics is an interdisciplinary field encompassing telecommunications, vehicular technologies ( road transport, road safety, etc.), electrical engineering (sensors, instrumentation, wireless communications, etc.), and computer science (multimedi ...
and
Machine-to-Machine Machine to machine (M2M) is direct communication between devices using any communications channel, including wired and wireless.
Machine to machine communication can include industrial instrumentation, enabling a sensor or meter to communicate th ...
, in which two applications automatically communicate with each other. Incident alerts are also common, and staff communications are also another use for B2B scenarios. Businesses can use SMS for time-critical alerts, updates, and reminders, mobile campaigns, content and entertainment applications. Mobile interaction can also be used for consumer-to-business interactions, such as media voting and competitions, and consumer-to-consumer interaction, for example, with mobile social networking, chatting and dating.
Text messaging is widely used in business settings; as well, it is used in many
civil service
The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...
and
non-governmental organization
A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in h ...
workplaces. The U.S. And Canadian civil service both adopted
Blackberry
The blackberry is an edible fruit produced by many species in the genus ''Rubus'' in the family Rosaceae, hybrids among these species within the subgenus ''Rubus'', and hybrids between the subgenera ''Rubus'' and ''Idaeobatus''. The taxonomy of ...
smartphones in the 2000s.
Group texts
Group texts involve more than two users. In some cases, when one or more people on the group text are offline, in airplane mode, or has their device shut down, a text being sent to the group may reveal an error message that the text did not go through. Users should rest assured, that all online or available users on the group received the message and that re-sending the message will only result in some participants receiving the message multiple times.
Online SMS services
There are a growing number of websites that allow users to send free SMS messages online. Some websites provide free SMS for promoting premium business packages.
Worldwide use
Europe
![SMS roaming welcome messages - Redvers](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/SMS_roaming_welcome_messages_-_Redvers.jpg)
Europe follows next behind Asia in terms of the popularity of the use of SMS. In 2003, an average of 16 billion messages was sent each month. Users in Spain sent a little more than fifty messages per month on average in 2003. In Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom, the figure was around 35–40 SMS messages per month. In each of these countries, the cost of sending an SMS message varies from €0.04–0.23, depending on the payment plan (with many contractual plans including all or several texts for free). In the United Kingdom, text messages are charged between £0.05–0.12. Curiously, France has not taken to SMS in the same way, sending just under 20 messages on average per user per month. France has the same
GSM
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...
technology as other European countries, so the uptake is not hampered by technical restrictions.
In the Republic of Ireland, 1.5 billion messages are sent every quarter, on average 114 messages per person per month.
In the United Kingdom, over 1 billion text messages were sent every week.
The
Eurovision Song Contest
The Eurovision Song Contest (), sometimes abbreviated to ESC and often known simply as Eurovision, is an international songwriting competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), featuring participants representing pr ...
organized the first pan-European SMS voting in 2002, as a part of the voting system (there was also a voting over traditional landline phone lines). In 2005, the Eurovision Song Contest organized the biggest televoting ever (with SMS and phone voting). During
roaming
Roaming is a wireless telecommunication term typically used with mobile devices, such as mobile phones. It refers to a mobile phone being used outside the range of its native network and connecting to another available cell network.
Technical ...
, that is, when a user connects to another network in different country from his own, the prices may be higher, but in July 2009, EU legislation went into effect limiting this price to €0.11.
Mobile service providers in Finland offer contracts in which users can send 1000 text messages a month for €10. In Finland, which has very high mobile phone ownership rates, some TV channels began "SMS chat", which involved sending short messages to a phone number, and the messages would be shown on TV. Chats are always moderated, which prevents users from sending offensive material to the channel. The craze evolved into quizzes and strategy games and then faster-paced games designed for television and SMS control. Games require users to register their nicknames and send short messages to control a character onscreen. Messages usually cost 0.05 to 0.86 Euro apiece, and games can require the player to send dozens of messages. In December 2003, a Finnish TV channel,
MTV3
MTV3 ( fi, MTV Kolme, sv, MTV Tre) is a Finnish commercial television station. It had the biggest audience share of all Finnish TV channels until Yle TV1 (from Yle) took the lead. The letters MTV stand for Mainos-TV (literally "Advertisemen ...
, put a
Santa Claus
Santa Claus, also known as Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Kris Kringle, or simply Santa, is a Legend, legendary figure originating in Western Christianity, Western Christian culture who is said to Christmas gift-bringer, bring ...
character on-air reading aloud text messages sent in by viewers. On 12 March 2004, the first entirely "interactive" TV channel, VIISI, began operation in Finland. However, SBS Finland Oy took over the channel and turned it into a music channel named ''The Voice'' in November 2004. In 2006, the
Prime Minister of Finland
The prime minister of Finland ( fi, Suomen pääministeri; ) is the leader of the Finnish Government. The prime minister and their cabinet exercise executive authority in the state. The prime minister is formally ranked third in the protocol ...
,
Matti Vanhanen
Matti Taneli Vanhanen (; born 4 November 1955) is a Finnish politician who served as Prime Minister of Finland from 2003 to 2010. He was also Chairman of the Centre Party and President of the European Council in 2006. In his earlier career, h ...
, made the news when he allegedly broke up with his girlfriend with a text message. In 2007, the first book written solely in text messages, ''Viimeiset viestit'' (''Last Messages''), was released by Finnish author
Hannu Luntiala
Hannu Veikko Luntiala (born October 12, 1952) is the former Director General of the Population Register Centre in Finland and an author for Tammi and Aviador Kustannus, both Finnish publishing companies.
Career at Population Register Centre
...
. It is about an executive who travels through Europe and India.
United States
In the United States, text messaging is very popular; as reported by CTIA in December 2009, the 286 million US subscribers sent 152.7 billion text messages per month, for an average of 534 messages per subscriber per month. The
Pew Research Center
The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan American think tank (referring to itself as a "fact tank") based in Washington, D.C.
It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the w ...
found in May 2010 that 72% of U.S. adult cellphone users send and receive text messages. In the U.S., SMS is often charged both at the sender and at the destination, but, unlike phone calls, it cannot be rejected or dismissed. The reasons for lower uptake than other countries are varied. Many users have unlimited "mobile-to-mobile" minutes, high monthly minute allotments, or unlimited service. Moreover, "
push to talk
Push-to-talk (PTT), also known as press-to-transmit, is a method of having conversations or talking on half-duplex communication lines, including two-way radio, using a momentary button to switch from voice reception mode to transmit mode.
H ...
" services offer the instant connectivity of SMS and are typically unlimited. The integration between competing providers and technologies necessary for cross-network text messaging was not initially available. Some providers originally charged extra for texting, reducing its appeal. In the third quarter of 2006, at least 12 billion text messages were sent on AT&T's network, up almost 15% from the preceding quarter. In the U.S., while texting is mainly popular among people from 13–22 years old, it is also increasing among adults and business users. The age that a child receives his/her first cell phone has also decreased, making text messaging a popular way of communicating. The number of texts sent in the US has gone up over the years as the price has gone down to an average of $0.10 per text sent and received. To convince more customers to buy unlimited text messaging plans, some major cellphone providers have increased the price to send and receive text messages from $.15 to $.20 per message. This is over $1,300 per
megabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Its recommended unit symbol is MB. The unit prefix ''mega'' is a multiplier of (106) in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one megabyte is one million bytes o ...
. Many providers offer unlimited plans, which can result in a lower rate per text, given sufficient volume.
Japan
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
was among the first countries to adopt short messages widely, with pioneering non-GSM services including
J-Phone
is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs th ...
's
SkyMail and
NTT Docomo's
Short Mail
Short may refer to:
Places
* Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon
* Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community
* Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place
People
* Short (surname)
* List of people known as ...
. Japanese adolescents first began text messaging, because it was a cheaper form of communication than the other available forms. Thus, Japanese theorists created the selective interpersonal relationship theory, claiming that mobile phones can change
social networks
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
among young people (classified as 13- to 30-year-olds). They theorized this age group had extensive but low-quality relationships with friends, and mobile phone usage may facilitate improvement in the quality of their relationships. They concluded this age group prefers "selective interpersonal relationships in which they maintain particular, partial, but rich relations, depending on the situation." The same studies showed participants rated friendships in which they communicated face-to-face and through text messaging as being more intimate than those in which they communicated solely face-to-face. This indicates participants make new relationships with face-to-face communication at an early stage, but use text messaging to increase their contact later on. As the relationships between participants grew more intimate, the frequency of text messaging also increased. However, short messaging has been largely rendered obsolete by the prevalence of mobile Internet e-mail, which can be sent to and received from any e-mail address, mobile or otherwise. That said, while usually presented to the user simply as a uniform "mail" service (and most users are unaware of the distinction), the operators may still internally transmit the content as short messages, especially if the destination is on the same network.
China
Text messaging is popular and cheap in China. About 700 billion messages were sent in 2007. Text message spam is also a problem in China. In 2007, 353.8 billion spam messages were sent, up 93% from the previous year. It is about 12.44 messages per week per person. It is routine that the People's Republic of China government monitors text messages across the country for illegal content.
Among Chinese migrant workers with little formal education, it is common to refer to SMS manuals when text messaging. These manuals are published as cheap, handy, smaller-than-pocket-size booklets that offer diverse linguistic phrases to utilize as messages.
Philippines
SMS was introduced to selected markets in the Philippines in 1995. In 1998, Philippine mobile service providers launched SMS more widely across the country, with initial television marketing campaigns targeting hearing-impaired users. The service was initially free with subscriptions, but Filipinos quickly exploited the feature to communicate for free instead of using voice calls, which they would be charged for. After telephone companies realized this trend, they began charging for SMS. The rate across networks is 1 peso per SMS (about US$0.023). Even after users were charged for SMS, it remained cheap, about one-tenth of the price of a voice call. This low price led to about five million Filipinos owning a cell phone by 2001.
Because of the highly social nature of Philippine culture and the affordability of SMS compared to voice calls, SMS usage shot up. Filipinos used texting not only for social messages but also for political purposes, as it allowed the Filipinos to express their opinions on current events and political issues. It became a powerful tool for Filipinos in promoting or denouncing issues and was a key factor during the 2001
EDSA II
The Second EDSA Revolution, also known as the Second People Power Revolution, EDSA 2001, or EDSA II (pronounced ''EDSA Two'' or ''EDSA Dos''), was a political protest from January 17–20, 2001, which peacefully overthrew the government of Jose ...
revolution, which overthrew then-President
Joseph Estrada
Joseph Ejercito Estrada, (; born Jose Marcelo Ejercito; April 19, 1937), also known by the nickname Erap, is a Filipino politician and former actor. He served as the 13th president of the Philippines from 1998 to 2001, the 9th vice preside ...
, who was eventually found guilty of corruption. According to 2009 statistics, there are about 72 million mobile service subscriptions (roughly 80% of the Filipino population), with around 1.39 billion SMS messages being sent daily.
[Research and Markets: Philippines – Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband](_blank)
Business Wire (23 August 2010). Retrieved on 5 April 2012. Because of the large number of text messages being sent, the Philippines became known as the "text capital of the world" during the late 1990s until the early 2000s.
New Zealand
There are three mobile network companies in New Zealand.
Spark NZ
Spark New Zealand Limited is a New Zealand telecommunications company providing fixed-line telephone services, a mobile phone network, internet access services, and (through its Spark Digital division) ICT services to businesses. It was know ...
(formally Telecom NZ), was the first telecommunication company in New Zealand. In 2011, Spark was broken into two companies, with Chorus Ltd taking the landline infrastructure and Spark NZ providing services including over their mobile network.
Vodafone NZ
Vodafone New Zealand Limited is a New Zealand telecommunications company.
It was a subsidiary of the London-listed company Vodafone Plc until 31 July 2019, when its sale to a consortium comprising Infratil Limited and Brookfield Asset Manageme ...
acquired mobile network provider Bellsouth New Zealand in 1998 and has 2.32 million customers as of July 2013. Vodafone launched the first Text messaging service in 1999 and has introduced innovative TXT services like Safe TXT and CallMe
2degrees
2degrees is a New Zealand telecommunications provider. Its mobile network launched on 4 August 2009 after nine years of planning. 2degrees offers prepaid and pay-monthly mobile services as well as fixed-line phone and broadband services. 2degree ...
Mobile Ltd launched in August 2009. In 2005, around 85% of the adult population had a mobile phone. In general, texting is more popular than making phone calls, as it is viewed as less intrusive and therefore more polite.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Text messaging will become a key revenue driver for mobile network operators in Africa over the next couple of years. Today, text messaging is already slowly gaining influence in the African market. One such person used text messaging to spread the word about HIV and AIDS. Also, in September 2009, a multi-country campaign in Africa used text messaging to expose stock-outs of essential medicines at public health facilities and put pressure on governments to address the issue.
Social effects
The advent of text messaging made possible new forms of interaction that were not possible before. A person may now carry out a conversation with another user without the constraint of being expected to reply within a short amount of time and without needing to set time aside to engage in conversation. With voice calling, both participants need to be free at the same time. Mobile phone users can maintain communication during situations in which a voice call is impractical, impossible, or unacceptable, such as during a school class or work meeting. Texting has provided a venue for
participatory culture
Participatory culture, an opposing concept to consumer culture, is a culture in which private individuals (the public) do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers ( prosumers). The term is most often applied to the produc ...
, allowing viewers to vote in online and TV polls, as well as receive information while they are on the move. Texting can also bring people together and create a sense of community through "
Smart Mobs
''Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution'' is a book by Howard Rheingold dealing with the social, economic and political changes implicated by developing technology. The book covers subjects from text-messaging culture to wireless Internet
...
" or "Net War", which create "people power".
Research has also proven that text messaging is somehow making the social distances larger and could be ruining verbal communication skills for many people.
Effect on language
![SillyModernSociety](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/SillyModernSociety.jpg)
The small
phone keypad and the rapidity of typical text message exchanges have caused a number of spelling abbreviations: as in the phrase "txt msg", "u" (an abbreviation for "you"), "HMU"("hit me up"; i.e., call me), or use of
camel case
Camel case (sometimes stylized as camelCase or CamelCase, also known as camel caps or more formally as medial capitals) is the practice of writing phrases without spaces or punctuation. The format indicates the separation of words with a single ...
, such as in "ThisIsVeryLame". To avoid the even more limited message lengths allowed when using
Cyrillic
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 = Phoenician
, fam4 = G ...
or
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
letters, speakers of languages written in those alphabets often use the
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
for their own
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
. In certain languages utilizing
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
marks, such as Polish, SMS technology created an entire new variant of written language: characters normally written with diacritic marks (e.g., ''
ą'', ''
ę'', ''
ś'', ''
ż'' in Polish) are now being written without them (as ''a'', ''e'', ''s'', ''z'') to enable using cell phones without Polish
script
Script may refer to:
Writing systems
* Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire
* Script (styles of handwriting)
** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of handw ...
or to save space in
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
messages. Historically, this language developed out of shorthand used in
bulletin board system
A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...
s and later in Internet
chat room
The term chat room, or chatroom (and sometimes group chat; abbreviated as GC), is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology, ranging from ...
s, where users would abbreviate some words to allow a response to be typed more quickly, though the amount of time saved was often inconsequential. However, this became much more pronounced in SMS, where mobile phone users either have a numeric keyboard (with older cellphones) or a small
QWERTY
QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created f ...
keyboard (for 2010s-era smartphones), so more effort is required to type each character, and there is sometimes a limit on the number of characters that may be sent. In
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...
, numbers that sound similar to words are used in place of those words. For example, the numbers 520 in Chinese (''wǔ èr líng'') sound like the words for "I love you" (''wǒ ài nǐ''). The sequence 748 (''qī sì bā'') sounds like the curse "go to hell" (''qù sǐ ba'').
Predictive text
Predictive text is an input technology used where one key or button represents many letters, such as on the numeric keypads of mobile phones and in accessibility technologies. Each key press results in a ''prediction'' rather than repeatedly ...
software, which attempts to guess words (
Tegic Tegic Communications, Inc. was a predictive text company based in Seattle, Washington, United States, founded on November 18, 1996. It was acquired by AOL on December 3, 1999, and subsequently, on August 24, 2007, acquired by Nuance Communications, ...
's
T9 as well as
iTap
iTap is a predictive text technology developed for mobile phones, developed by Motorola employees as a competitor to T9. It was designed as a replacement for the old letter mappings on phones to help with word entry. This makes some of the mode ...
) or
letters
Letter, letters, or literature may refer to:
Characters typeface
* Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet.
* Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
(Eatoni's
LetterWise
LetterWise and WordWise were predictive text entry systems developed by Eatoni Ergonomics (Eatoni) for handheld devices with ambiguous keyboards / keypads, typically non-smart traditional cellphones and portable devices with keypads. All patents ...
) reduces the labour of time-consuming input. This makes abbreviations not only less necessary but slower to type than regular words that are in the software's
dictionary
A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...
. However, it makes the messages longer, often requiring the text message to be sent in multiple parts and, therefore, costing more to send. The use of text messaging has changed the way that people talk and write essays, some believing it to be harmful. Children today are receiving cell phones at an age as young as eight years old; more than 35 per cent of children in second and third grade have their own mobile phones. Because of this, the texting language is integrated into the way that students think from an earlier age than ever before. In November 2006, New Zealand Qualifications Authority approved the move that allowed students of secondary schools to use mobile phone text language in the end-of-the-year-exam papers. Highly publicized reports, beginning in 2002, of the use of text language in school assignments, caused some to become concerned that the quality of written communication is on the decline,
and other reports claim that teachers and professors are beginning to have a hard time controlling the problem.
However, the notion that text language is widespread or harmful is refuted by research from linguistic experts.
An article in ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' explores how text messaging has
anglicized
Anglicisation is the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by English culture or British culture, or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-English becomes English. It can also refer to the influen ...
some of the world's languages. The use of
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
marks is dropped in languages such as French, as well as symbols in
Ethiopian languages. In his book, ''
Txtng: the Gr8 Db8'' (which translates as "Texting: the Great Debate"),
David Crystal
David Crystal, (born 6 July 1941) is a British linguist, academic, and prolific author best known for his works on linguistics and the English language.
Family
Crystal was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, on 6 July 1941 after his mother had ...
states that texters in all eleven languages use "lol" ("laughing out loud"), "u", "brb" ("be right back"), and "gr8" ("great"), all English-based shorthands. The use of pictograms and logograms in texts are present in every language. They shorten words by using symbols to represent the word or symbols whose name sounds like a syllable of the word such as in 2day or b4. This is commonly used in other languages as well. Crystal gives some examples in several languages such as Italian ''sei'', "six", is used for ''sei'', "you are". Example: dv6 = ''dove sei'' ("where are you") and French k7 = ''cassette'' ("cassette tape"). There is also the use of numeral sequences, substituting for several syllables of a word and creating whole phrases using numerals. For example, in French, a12c4 can be said as ''à un de ces quatres'', "see you around" (literally: "to one of these four ''
ays'"). An example of using symbols in texting and borrowing from English is the use of ''@''. Whenever it is used in texting, its intended use is with the English pronunciation. Crystal gives the example of the Welsh use of ''@'' in ''@F'', pronounced ataf, meaning "to me". In character-based languages such as Chinese and Japanese, numbers are assigned syllables based on the shortened form of the pronunciation of the number, sometimes the English pronunciation of the number. In this way, numbers alone can be used to communicate whole passages, such as in Chinese, "8807701314520" can be literally translated as "Hug hug you, kiss you, whole life, whole life I love you." English influences worldwide texting in variation, but still in combination with the individual properties of languages.
American
popular culture
Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...
is also recognized in shorthand. For example,
Homer Simpson
Homer Jay Simpson is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the American animated sitcom ''The Simpsons''. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared, along with the rest of his family, in ''The Tracey Ullman Show'' short "G ...
translates into: ~(_8^(, ). Crystal also suggests that texting has led to more creativity in the English language, giving people opportunities to create their own slang,
emoticon
An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for "emotion icon", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a ...
s, abbreviations, acronyms, etc. The feeling of individualism and freedom makes texting more popular and a more efficient way to communicate. Crystal has also been quoted in saying that "In a logical world, text messaging should not have survived." But text messaging didn't just come out of nowhere. It originally began as a messaging system that would send out emergency information. But it gained immediate popularity with the public. What followed is the SMS we see today, which is a very quick and efficient way of sharing information from person to person. Work by
Richard Ling
Richard Ling (Rich Ling) is a communications scholar who focuses on mobile communication. He was the Shaw Foundation Professor of Media Technology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (2013-2021). He has also lived and worked in Norway ...
has shown that texting has a gendered dimension and it plays into the development of teen identity. In addition we text to a very small number of other persons. For most people, half of their texts go to 3 – 5 other people.
Research by Rosen et al. (2009) found that those young adults who used more language-based textisms (shortcuts such as LOL, 2nite, etc.) in daily writing produced worse formal writing than those young adults who used fewer linguistic textisms in daily writing. However, the exact opposite was true for informal writing. This suggests that perhaps the act of using textisms to shorten communication words leads young adults to produce more informal writing, which may then help them to be better "informal" writers. Due to text messaging, teens are writing more, and some teachers see that this comfort with language can be harnessed to make better writers. This new form of communication may be encouraging students to put their thoughts and feelings into words and this may be able to be used as a bridge, to get them more interested in formal writing.
Joan H. Lee
Joan Lee Tu (b. 1981) is a Canadian linguist, data scientist, and medical student. Her Master of Arts thesis entitled ''What does txting do 2 language: The influences of exposure to messaging and print media on acceptability constraints'' (201 ...
in her thesis, ''What does txting do 2 language: The influences of exposure to messaging and print media on acceptability constraints'' (2011), she associates exposure to text messaging with more rigid acceptability constraints. The thesis suggests that more exposure to the colloquial,
Generation Text language of text messaging contributes to being less accepting of words. In contrast, Lee found that students with more exposure to traditional print media (such as books and magazines) were more accepting of both real and fictitious words. The thesis, which garnered international media attention, also presents a
literature review
A literature review is an overview of the previously published works on a topic. The term can refer to a full scholarly paper or a section of a scholarly work such as a book, or an article. Either way, a literature review is supposed to provid ...
of
academic literature
Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or theses. The part of academic written output that is not formally pub ...
on the effects of text messaging on language. Texting has also been shown to have had no effect or some positive effects on
literacy
Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, huma ...
. According to Plester, Wood and Joshi and their research done on the study of 88 British 10–12-year-old children and their knowledge of text messages, "textisms are essentially forms of phonetic abbreviation" that show that "to produce and read such abbreviations arguably requires a level of phonological awareness (and orthographic awareness) in the child concerned."
Texting while driving
![Cell phone use while driving](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Cell_phone_use_while_driving.jpg)
Texting while driving leads to increased distraction behind the wheel and can lead to an increased risk of an accident. In 2006,
Liberty Mutual Insurance Group conducted a survey with more than 900 teens from over 26 high schools nationwide. The results showed that 87% of students found texting to be "very" or "extremely" distracting. A study by
AAA
AAA, Triple A, or Triple-A is a three-letter initialism or abbreviation which may refer to:
Airports
* Anaa Airport in French Polynesia (IATA airport code AAA)
* Logan County Airport (Illinois) (FAA airport code AAA)
Arts, entertainment, and me ...
found that 46% of teens admitted to being distracted behind the wheel due to texting. One example of distraction behind the wheel is the
2008 Chatsworth train collision, which killed 25 passengers. The engineer had sent 45 text messages while operating the train. A 2009 experiment with ''
Car and Driver
''Car and Driver'' (''CD'' or ''C/D'') is an American automotive enthusiast magazine. In 2006 its total circulation was 1.23 million. It is owned by Hearst Magazines, who purchased prior owner Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. in 2011. It was fou ...
'' editor Eddie Alterman (that took place at a deserted airfield, for safety reasons) compared texting with
drunk driving. The experiment found that texting while driving was more dangerous than being drunk. While being legally drunk added 4 feet to Alterman's stopping distance while going , reading an e-mail on a phone added , and sending a text message added .
In 2009, the
Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also ...
Transportation Institute released the results of an 18-month study that involved placing cameras inside the cabs of more than 100 long-haul trucks, which recorded the drivers over a combined driving distance of three million miles. The study concluded that when the drivers were texting, their risk of crashing was 23 times greater than when not texting.
Texting while walking
Due to the proliferation of smart phone applications performed while walking, "texting while walking" or "wexting" is the increasing practice of people being transfixed to their mobile device without looking in any direction but their personal screen while walking. First coined reference in 2015 in New York from Rentrak's chief client officer when discussing time spent with media and various media usage metrics. Text messaging among pedestrians leads to increased cognitive distraction and reduced situation awareness, and may lead to increases in unsafe behaviour leading to injury and death.
Recent studies conducted on cell phone use while walking showed that cell phone users recall fewer objects when conversing,
walk slower,
have altered gait
and are more unsafe when crossing a street.
Additionally, some gait analyses showed that stance phase during overstepping motion, longitudinal and lateral deviation increased during cell phone operation, but step length and clearance did not;
a different analysis did find increased step clearance and reduced step length.
It is unclear which processes may be affected by distraction, which types of distraction may affect which cognitive processes, and how individual differences may affect the influence of distraction.
Lamberg and Muratori believe that engaging in a dual-task, such as texting while walking, may interfere with working memory and result in walking errors.
Their study demonstrated that participants engaged in text messaging were unable to maintain walking speed or retain accurate spatial information, suggesting an inability to adequately divide their attention between two tasks. According to them, the addition of texting while walking with vision occluded increases the demands placed on the working memory system resulting in gait disruptions.
Texting on a phone distracts participants, even when the texting task used is a relatively simple one.
Stavrinos et al. investigated the effect of other cognitive tasks, such as engaging in conversations or cognitive tasks on a phone, and found that participants actually have reduced visual awareness.
This finding was supported by Licence et al., who conducted a similar study.
For example, texting pedestrians may fail to notice unusual events in their environment, such as a unicycling clown.
These findings suggest that tasks that require the allocation of cognitive resources can affect visual attention even when the task itself does not require the participants to avert their eyes from their environment. The act of texting itself seems to impair pedestrians' visual awareness. It appears that the distraction produced by texting is a combination of both a cognitive and visual perceptual distraction.
A study conducted by Licence et al. supported some of these findings, particularly that those who text while walking significantly alter their gait. However, they also found that the gait pattern texters adopted was slower and more "protective", and consequently did not increase obstacle contact or tripping in a typical pedestrian context.
There have also been technological approaches to increase the safety/awareness of pedestrians that are (unintentionally) blind while using a smartphone, e.g., using a
Kinect
Kinect is a line of motion sensing input devices produced by Microsoft and first released in 2010. The devices generally contain RGB cameras, and infrared projectors and detectors that map depth through either structured light or time of flig ...
or an ultrasound phone cover as a virtual white cane, or using the built-in camera to algorithmically analyze single, respectively a stream of pictures for obstacles, with Wang et al. proposing to use machine learning to specifically detect incoming vehicles.
Sexting
Sexting is slang for the act of sending sexually explicit or suggestive content between mobile devices using SMS.
It contains either text, images, or video that is intended to be sexually arousing. Sexting was reported as early as 2005 in ''
The Sunday Telegraph
''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961 and published by the Telegraph Media Group, a division of Press Holdings.
It is the sister paper of ''The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', kn ...
Magazine'',
constituting a trend in the creative use of SMS to excite another with alluring messages throughout the day.
Although sexting often takes place consensually between two people, it can also occur against the wishes of a person who is the subject of the content.
A number of instances have been reported in which the recipients of sexting have shared the content of the messages with others, with less intimate intentions, such as to impress their friends or embarrass their sender. Celebrities such as
Miley Cyrus
Miley Ray Cyrus ( ; born Destiny Hope Cyrus on November 23, 1992) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Known for her distinctive raspy voice, her music spans across varied styles and genres, including pop, country, rock, hip hop ...
,
Vanessa Hudgens
Vanessa Anne Hudgens (; born December 14, 1988) is an American actress and singer. After making her feature film debut in '' Thirteen'' (2003), Hudgens rose to fame portraying Gabriella Montez in the ''High School Musical'' film series (2006 ...
, and
Adrienne Bailon
Adrienne Eliza Bailon-Houghton ( née Bailon () ; born October 24, 1983) is an American television personality, singer, and actress. She is a former member of the girl groups 3LW and The Cheetah Girls. From 2013 to 2022, Bailon was a co-host o ...
have been victims of such abuses of sexting.
A 2008 survey by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com suggested a trend of sexting and other seductive online content being readily shared between teens. One in five teen girls surveyed (22 per cent)—and 11 per cent of teen girls aged 13–16 years old—say they have electronically sent, or posted online, nude or semi-nude images of themselves. One-third (33 per cent) of teen boys and one-quarter (25 per cent) of teen girls say they were shown private nude or semi-nude images. According to the survey, sexually suggestive messages (text, e-mail, and instant messaging) were even more common than images, with 39 per cent of teens having sent or posted such messages, and half of the teens (50 per cent) having received them.
A 2012 study that has received wide international media attention was conducted at the
University of Utah
The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...
Department of Psychology by Donald S. Strassberg, Ryan Kelly McKinnon, Michael Sustaíta and Jordan Rullo. They surveyed 606 teenagers ages 14–18 and found that nearly 20 per cent of the students said they had sent a sexually explicit image of themselves via cell phone, and nearly twice as many said that they had received a sexually explicit picture. Of those receiving such a picture, over 25 per cent indicated that they had forwarded it to others. In addition, of those who had sent a sexually explicit picture, over a third had done so despite believing that there could be serious legal and other consequences if they got caught. Students who had sent a picture by cell phone were more likely than others to find the activity acceptable. The authors conclude: "These results argue for educational efforts such as cell phone safety assemblies, awareness days, integration into class curriculum and teacher training, designed to raise awareness about the potential consequences of sexting among young people." Sexting becomes a legal issue when teens (under 18) are involved, because any nude photos they may send of themselves would put the recipients in possession of child pornography.
In schools
![Textinginclass](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Textinginclass.jpg)
Text messaging has affected students academically by creating an easier way to cheat on exams. In December 2002, a dozen students were caught cheating on an accounting exam through the use of text messages on their mobile phones.
In December 2002, Hitotsubashi University in Japan failed 26 students for receiving emailed exam answers on their mobile phones. The number of students caught using mobile phones to cheat on exams has increased significantly in recent years. According to Okada (2005), most Japanese mobile phones can send and receive long text messages of between 250 and 3000 characters with graphics, video, audio, and Web links.
In England, 287 school and college students were excluded from exams in 2004 for using mobile phones during exams. Some teachers and professors claim that advanced texting features can lead to students cheating on exams. Students in high school and college classrooms are using their mobile phones to send and receive texts during lectures at high rates. Further, published research has established that students who text during college lectures have impaired memories of the lecture material compared to students who do not. For example, in one study, the number of irrelevant text messages sent and received during a lecture covering the topic of developmental psychology was related to students' memory of the lecture.
Bullying
Spreading rumors and gossip by text message, using text messages to
bully individuals, or forwarding texts that contain defamatory content is an issue of great concern for parents and schools. Text "bullying" of this sort can cause distress and damage reputations. In some cases, individuals who are bullied online have committed suicide. Harding and Rosenberg (2005) argue that the urge to forward text messages can be difficult to resist, describing text messages as "loaded weapons".
Influence on perceptions of the student
When a student sends an email that contains phonetic abbreviations and acronyms that are common in text messaging (e.g., "gr8" instead of "great"), it can influence how that student is subsequently evaluated. In a study by Lewandowski and Harrington (2006), participants read a student's email sent to a professor that either contained text-messaging abbreviations (gr8, How R U?) or parallel text in standard English (great, How are you?), and then provided impressions of the sender. Students who used abbreviations in their email were perceived as having a less favorable personality and as putting forth less effort on an essay they submitted along with the email. Specifically, abbreviation users were seen as less intelligent, responsible, motivated, studious, dependable, and hard-working. These findings suggest that the nature of a student's email communication can influence how others perceive the student and their work.
However, students have become aware of the reality that using these
textisms and adaptations can negatively impact their professionalism. Drouin and Davis surveyed American undergraduates in 2009 and found that three quarters of participants believed the use of textisms were not appropriate in formal messaging and writing.
A study performed by Grace et. al. (2013) asked 150 undergraduate students to rate the appropriateness of using textisms in a given scenario on a scale of one to five - five being entirely appropriate and one being not at all.
All but eleven of the students rated the use of textisms in exams and typed assignments as “not at all appropriate,” showing that the students are aware of how they must adapt their written language and tone depending on the context.
Grace et. al. (2010) went further, observing hundreds of academic papers from previous undergraduate students' exams, only to find that out of 533,500 words, a mere 0.02% were textisms. They owe this to the fact that the more accumulated experience a student has, the more they are able to understand when the “appropriate” and “inappropriate” times to use such language is.
Law and crime
Text messaging has been a subject of interest for police forces around the world. One of the issues of concern to
law enforcement
Law enforcement is the activity of some members of government who act in an organized manner to enforce the law by discovering, deterring, rehabilitating, or punishing people who violate the rules and norms governing that society. The term en ...
agencies is the use of
encrypted
In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can decip ...
text messages. In 2003, a British company developed a program called Fortress SMS which used 128 bit AES
encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can decip ...
to protect SMS messages. Police have also retrieved deleted text messages to aid them in solving crimes. For example, Swedish police retrieved deleted texts from a cult member who claimed she committed a double murder based on forwarded texts she received. Police in
Tilburg
Tilburg () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, in the southern province of North Brabant. With a population of 222,601 (1 July 2021), it is the second-largest city or municipality in North Brabant after Eindhoven and the seventh-larg ...
, Netherlands, started an SMS alert program, in which they would send a message to ask citizens to be vigilant when a burglar was on the loose or a child was missing in their neighbourhood. Several thieves have been caught and children have been found using the SMS Alerts. The service has been expanding to other cities. A Malaysian–Australian company has released a multi-layer SMS security program. Boston police are now turning to text messaging to help stop crime. The Boston Police Department asks citizens to send texts to make anonymous crime tips.
Under some interpretations of
sharia law
Sharia (; ar, شريعة, sharīʿa ) is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the Five Pillars of Islam, religious precepts of Islam and is based on the Islamic holy books, sacred scriptures o ...
, husbands can divorce their wives by the pronouncement of
talaq
Divorce in Islam can take a variety of forms, some initiated by the husband and some initiated by the wife. The main traditional legal categories are ''talaq'' ( repudiation), ''khulʿ'' (mutual divorce or ransom divorce) Historically, the rules ...
. In 2003, a court in Malaysia upheld such a divorce pronouncement which was transmitted via SMS.
The
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) is the court of last resort, highest court in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Although the claim is disputed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the SJC claims the di ...
ruled in 2017 that under the state constitution, police require a
warrant before obtaining access to text messages without consent.
Social unrest
Texting has been used on a number of occasions with the result of the gathering of large aggressive crowds. SMS messaging drew a crowd to
Cronulla Beach
Cronulla Beach (sometimes referred to as ''South Cronulla Beach''), is a patrolled beach on Bate Bay, in Cronulla, New South Wales, Australia. The Cronulla Pavilion and the Cronulla Lifesaving Club are two prominent buildings located close to th ...
in Sydney resulting in the
2005 Cronulla riots. Not only were text messages circulating in the Sydney area but in other states as well (''Daily Telegraph''). The volume of such text messages and e-mails also increased in the wake of the riot. The crowd of 5000 at stages became violent, attacking certain ethnic groups. Sutherland Shire Mayor directly blamed heavily circulated SMS messages for the unrest. NSW police considered whether people could be charged over the texting. Retaliatory attacks also used SMS.
The Narre Warren Incident, when a group of 500 party goers attended a party at Narre Warren in Melbourne, Australia, and rioted in January 2008, also was a response of communication being spread by SMS and Myspace. Following the incident, the Police Commissioner wrote an open letter asking young people to be aware of the power of SMS and the Internet. In Hong Kong, government officials find that text messaging helps socially because they can send multiple texts to the community. Officials say it is an easy way of contacting the community or individuals for meetings or events. Texting was used to coordinate gatherings during the
2009 Iranian election protests.
Between 2009 and 2012 the U.S. secretly created and funded a
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
-like service for Cubans called
ZunZuneo
ZunZuneo was an online United States state owned company social networking and microblogging service marketed to Cuban users. The service was created in 2010 by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The US government ...
, initially based on mobile phone text message service and later with an internet interface. The service was funded by the
U.S. Agency for International Development
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $27 ...
through its
Office of Transition Initiatives, who utilized contractors and front companies in the Cayman Islands, Spain and Ireland. A longer-term objective was to organize "smart mobs" that might "renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society." A database about the subscribers was created, including gender, age, and "political tendencies". At its peak ZunZuneo had 40,000 Cuban users, but the service closed as financially unsustainable when U.S. funding was stopped.
In politics
![Sms](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/SMS.jpg)
Text messaging has affected the political world. American campaigns find that text messaging is a much easier, cheaper way of getting to the voters than the door-to-door approach. In 2006 Mexico's then president-elect
Felipe Calderón
Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa (; born 18 August 1962) is a Mexican politician who served as the 63rd president of Mexico from 1 December 2006 to 30 November 2012 and Secretary of Energy during the presidency of Vicente Fox between 2003 ...
launched millions of text messages in the days immediately preceding his narrow win over
Andrés Manuel López Obrador
Andrés Manuel López Obrador (; born 13 November 1953), also known by his initials AMLO, is a Mexican politician who has been serving as the 65th president of Mexico since 1 December 2018. He previously served as Head of Government of Mex ...
.
In January 2001, Joseph Estrada was forced to resign from the post of president of the Philippines. The popular campaign against him was widely reported to have been coordinated with SMS chain letters.
A massive texting campaign was credited with boosting youth turnout in Spain's 2004 parliamentary elections.
In 2008, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his Chief of Staff at the time became entangled in a sex scandal stemming from the exchange of over 14,000 text messages that eventually led to his forced resignation, the conviction of perjury, and other charges.
Text messaging has been used to turn down other political leaders. During the 2004 U.S. Democratic and Republican National Conventions, protesters used an SMS-based organizing tool called TXTmob to get to opponents. In the last day before the 2004 presidential elections in Romania, a message against
Adrian Năstase
Adrian Năstase (; born 22 June 1950) is a Romanian jurist, academic/professor, blogger, and former politician who served as the Prime Minister of Romania from October 2000 to December 2004.
He competed in the 2004 presidential election as th ...
was largely circulated, thus breaking the laws that prohibited campaigning that day. Text messaging has helped politics by promoting campaigns.
On 20 January 2001, President
Joseph Estrada
Joseph Ejercito Estrada, (; born Jose Marcelo Ejercito; April 19, 1937), also known by the nickname Erap, is a Filipino politician and former actor. He served as the 13th president of the Philippines from 1998 to 2001, the 9th vice preside ...
of the Philippines became the first head of state in history to lose power to a
smart mob.
[Rheingold, Howard (2002) Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, Perseus, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. xi–xxii, 157–82 .] More than one million Manila residents assembled at the site of the 1986
People Power
"People Power" is a political term denoting the populist driving force of any social movement which invokes the authority of grassroots opinion and willpower, usually in opposition to that of conventionally organised corporate or political for ...
peaceful demonstrations that have toppled the Marcos regime. These people have organized themselves and coordinated their actions through text messaging. They were able to bring down a government without having to use any weapons or violence. Through text messaging, their plans and ideas were communicated to others and successfully implemented. Also, this move encouraged the military to withdraw their support from the regime, and as a result, the Estrada government fell.
People were able to converge and unite with the use of their cell phones. "The rapid assembly of the anti-Estrada crowd was a hallmark of early
smart mob technology, and the millions of text messages exchanged by the demonstrators in 2001 was, by all accounts, a key to the crowds
esprit de corps."
Use in healthcare
![Text messaging used to provide encouragement to quit smoking](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Text_messaging_used_to_provide_encouragement_to_quit_smoking.png)
Text messaging is a rapidly growing trend in Healthcare. A randomized controlled trial of text messaging intervention for diabetes in Bangladesh was one of the first robust trials to report improvement in diabetes management in a low-and-middle income country. A recent systematic review and individual participants data meta analysis from 3779 participants reported that mobile phone text messaging could improve blood pressure and body mass index. Another study in people with type 2 diabetes showed that participants were willing to pay a modest amount to receive a diabetes text messaging program in addition to standard care. "One survey found that 73% of physicians text other physicians about work- similar to the overall percentage of the population that texts." A 2006 study of reminder messages sent to children and adolescents with
type 1 diabetes mellitus
Type 1 diabetes (T1D), formerly known as juvenile diabetes, is an autoimmune disease that originates when cells that make insulin (beta cells) are destroyed by the immune system. Insulin is a hormone required for the cells to use blood sugar f ...
showed favorable changes in adherence to treatment. A risk is that these physicians could be violating the
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA or the Kennedy– Kassebaum Act) is a United States Act of Congress enacted by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 21, 1 ...
. Where messages could be saved to a phone indefinitely, patient information could be subject to theft or loss, and could be seen by other unauthorized persons. The HIPAA privacy rule requires that any text message involving a medical decision must be available for the patient to access, meaning that any texts that are not documented in an EMR system could be a HIPAA violation.
Medical concerns
The excessive use of the thumb for pressing keys on mobile devices has led to a high rate of a form of
repetitive strain injury
A repetitive strain injury (RSI) is an injury to part of the musculoskeletal or nervous system caused by repetitive use, vibrations, compression or long periods in a fixed position. Other common names include repetitive stress disorders, cumula ...
termed "BlackBerry thumb" (although this refers to strain developed on older Blackberry devices, which had a scroll wheel on the side of the phone). An inflammation of the tendons in the thumb caused by constant text-messaging is also called text-messager's thumb, or texting
tenosynovitis
Tenosynovitis is the inflammation of the fluid-filled sheath (called the synovium) that surrounds a tendon, typically leading to joint pain, swelling, and stiffness. Tenosynovitis can be either infectious or noninfectious. Common clinical manifest ...
.
Texting has also been linked as a secondary source in numerous traffic collisions, in which police investigations of mobile phone records have found that many drivers have lost control of their cars while attempting to send or retrieve a text message. Increasing cases of Internet
addiction
Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to engage in certain behaviors, one of which is the usage of a drug, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences. Repetitive drug use o ...
are now also being linked to text messaging, as mobile phones are now more likely to have e-mail and Web capabilities to complement the ability to text.
Etiquette
Texting etiquette refers to what is considered appropriate texting behaviour. These expectations may concern different areas, such as the context in which a text was sent and received/read, who each participant was with when the participant sent or received/read a text message or what constitutes impolite text messages.
At the website of
The Emily Post Institute
The Emily Post Institute (EPI) is an organization located in Burlington, Vermont, that provides etiquette advice and training to news outlets and corporations in the United States of America and worldwide. It was founded by etiquette author Em ...
, the topic of ''texting'' has spurred several articles with the "do's and dont's" regarding the new form of communication. One example from the site is: "Keep your message brief. No one wants to have an entire conversation with you by texting when you could just call him or her instead." Another example is: "Don't use all Caps. Typing a text message in all capital letters will appear as though you are shouting at the recipient, and should be avoided."
Expectations for etiquette may differ depending on various factors. For example, expectations for appropriate behaviour have been found to differ markedly between the U.S. and India.
Another example is generational differences. In ''The M-Factor: How the Millennial Generation Is Rocking the Workplace'', Lynne Lancaster and David Stillman note that younger Americans often do not consider it rude to answer their cell or begin texting in the middle of a face-to-face conversation with someone else, while older people, less used to the behavior and the accompanying lack of eye contact or attention, find this to be disruptive and ill-mannered. With regard to texting in the workplace,
Plantronics
Plantronics, Inc. is an American electronics company — branded Poly to reflect its dual Plantronics and Polycom heritage — producing audio communications equipment for business and consumers. Its products support unified communications, mob ...
studied how we communicate at work] and found that 58% of US
knowledge workers
Knowledge workers are workforce, workers whose main capital (economics), capital is knowledge. Examples include programmer, programmers, physician, physicians, pharmacist, pharmacists, architect, architects, engineer, engineers, scientist, scienti ...
have increased the use of text messaging for work in the past five years. The same study found that 33% of knowledge workers felt text messaging was critical or very important to success and productivity at work.
Challenges
Spam
In 2002, an increasing trend towards
spamming
Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising, for the purpose of non-commercial proselytizing, for any prohibited purpose (especial ...
mobile phone users through SMS prompted cellular-service carriers to take steps against the practice, before it became a widespread problem. No major spamming incidents involving SMS had been reported , but the existence of mobile phone spam
has been noted by industry watchdogs including ''
Consumer Reports
Consumer Reports (CR), formerly Consumers Union (CU), is an American nonprofit consumer organization dedicated to independent product testing, investigative journalism, consumer-oriented research, public education, and consumer advocacy.
Founded ...
'' magazine and the Utility Consumers' Action Network
UCAN. In 2005, UCAN brought a case against Sprint for spamming its customers and charging $0.10 per text message.
The case was settled in 2006 with Sprint agreeing not to send customers Sprint advertisements via SMS.
SMS expert Acision (formerly LogicaCMG Telecoms) reported a new type of SMS malice at the end of 2006, noting the first instances of SMiShing (a cousin to e-mail
phishing
Phishing is a type of social engineering where an attacker sends a fraudulent (e.g., spoofed, fake, or otherwise deceptive) message designed to trick a person into revealing sensitive information to the attacker or to deploy malicious softwar ...
scams). In SMiShing, users receive SMS messages posing to be from a company, enticing users to phone premium-rate numbers or reply with personal information. Similar concerns were reported by PhonepayPlus, a
consumer watchdog
Consumer Watchdog (formerly the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights) is a non-profit, progressive organization which advocates for taxpayer and consumer interests, with a focus on insurance, health care, political reform, privacy and ener ...
in the United Kingdom, in 2012.
Pricing concerns
Concerns have been voiced
over the excessive cost of off-plan text messaging in the United States.
AT&T Mobility
AT&T Mobility LLC, also known as AT&T Wireless and marketed as simply AT&T, is an American telecommunications company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T Inc. and provides wireless services in the United States. AT&T Mobility is the thi ...
, along with most other service providers, charges texters 20 cents per message if they do not have a messaging plan or if they have exceeded their allotted number of texts. Given that an SMS message is at most 160
bytes
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...
in size, this cost scales to a cost of $1,310
per megabyte sent via text message. This is in sharp contrast with the price of unlimited data plans offered by the same carriers, which allow the transmission of hundreds of megabytes of data for monthly prices of about $15 to $45 in addition to a voice plan. As a comparison, a one-minute phone call uses up the same amount of network capacity as 600 text messages, meaning that if the same cost-per-traffic formula were applied to phone calls, cell phone calls would cost $120 per minute. With service providers gaining more customers and expanding their capacity, their overhead costs should be decreasing, not increasing. In 2005, text messaging generated nearly 70 billion dollars in revenue, as reported by Gartner, industry analysts, three times as much as Hollywood box office sales in 2005. World figures showed that over a trillion text messages were sent in 2005.
Although major cellphone providers deny any collusion, fees for out-of-package text messages have increased, doubling from 10 to 20 cents in the United States between 2007 and 2008 alone. On 16 July 2009, Senate hearings were held to look into any breach of the
Sherman Antitrust Act
The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 (, ) is a United States antitrust law which prescribes the rule of free competition among those engaged in commerce. It was passed by Congress and is named for Senator John Sherman, its principal author.
Th ...
. The same trend is visible in other countries, though increasingly widespread flat-rate plans, for example in Germany, do make text messaging easier, text messages sent abroad still result in higher costs.
Increasing competition
While text messaging is still a growing market, traditional SMS is becoming increasingly challenged by alternative messaging services which are available on smartphones with data connections. These services are much cheaper and offer more functionality like exchanging multimedia content (e.g. photos, videos or audio notes) and group messaging. Especially in western countries some of these services attract more and more users.
Security concerns
Consumer SMS should not be used for confidential communication. The contents of common SMS messages are known to the network operator's systems and personnel. Therefore, consumer SMS is not an appropriate technology for secure communications.
To address this issue, many companies use an
SMS gateway
An SMS gateway or MMS gateway allows a computer (also known as a Server) to send or receive text messages in the form of Short Message Service (SMS) or Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) transmissions between local and/or international telecommu ...
provider based on
SS7 connectivity to route the messages. The advantage of this international termination model is the ability to route data directly through
SS7, which gives the provider visibility of the complete path of the SMS. This means SMS messages can be sent directly to and from recipients without having to go through the
SMS-C of other mobile operators. This approach reduces the number of mobile operators that handle the message; however, it should not be considered as an end-to-end secure communication, as the content of the message is exposed to the
SMS gateway
An SMS gateway or MMS gateway allows a computer (also known as a Server) to send or receive text messages in the form of Short Message Service (SMS) or Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) transmissions between local and/or international telecommu ...
provider.
An alternative approach is to use end-to-end security software that runs on both the sending and receiving device, where the original text message is transmitted in encrypted form as a consumer SMS. By using key rotation, the encrypted text messages stored under
data retention Data retention defines the policies of persistent data and records management for meeting legal and business data archival requirements. Although sometimes interchangeable, it is not to be confused with the Data Protection Act 1998.
The differen ...
laws at the network operator cannot be decrypted even if one of the devices is compromised. A problem with this approach is that communicating devices needs to run compatible software. Failure rates without backward notification can be high between carriers. International texting can be unreliable depending on the country of origin, destination and respective operators. Differences in the
character set
Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using digital computers. The numerical values that ...
s used for coding can cause a text message sent from one country to another to become unreadable.
In popular culture
Records and competition
The ''
Guinness Book of World Records
''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...
'' has a world record for text messaging, currently held by Sonja Kristiansen of Norway. Kristiansen keyed in the official text message, as established by Guinness, in 37.28 seconds.
The message is, "The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality, they seldom attack a human."
In 2005, the record was held by a 24-year-old Scottish man, Craig Crosbie, who completed the same message in 48 seconds, beating the previous time by 19 seconds. ''The Book of Alternative Records'' lists Chris Young of
Salem, Oregon
Salem ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of Oregon, and the county seat of Marion County, Oregon, Marion County. It is located in the center of the Willamette Valley alongside the Willamette River, which runs north through the city. The river ...
, as the world-record holder for the fastest 160-character text message where the contents of the message are not provided ahead of time. His record of 62.3 seconds was set on 23 May 2007.
Elliot Nicholls of Dunedin, New Zealand, currently holds the world record for the fastest blindfolded text messaging. A record of a 160-letter text in 45 seconds while blindfolded was set on 17 November 2007, beating the old record of 1-minute 26 seconds set by an Italian in September 2006. Ohio native Andrew Acklin is credited with the world record for most text messages sent or received in a single month, with 200,052. His accomplishments were first in the World Records Academy and later followed up by ''Ripley's Believe It Or Not 2010: Seeing Is Believing''. He has been acknowledged by The Universal Records Database for the most text messages in a single month; however, this has since been broken twice and as of 2010 was listed as 566607 messages by Fred Lindgren.
In January 2010,
LG Electronics
LG Electronics Inc. () is a South Korean multinational electronics company headquartered in Yeouido-dong, Seoul, South Korea. LG Electronics is a part of LG Corporation, the fourth largest '' chaebol'' in South Korea, and often considered a ...
sponsored an international competition, the
LG Mobile World Cup, to determine the fastest pair of texters. The winners were a team from South Korea, Ha Mok-min and Bae Yeong-ho.
On 6 April 2011, SKH Apps released an iPhone app, iTextFast, to allow consumers to test their texting speed and practice the paragraph used by ''
Guinness Book of World Records
''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...
''. As of 2011, best time listed on Game Center for that paragraph is 34.65 seconds.
Morse code
A few competitions have been held between expert
Morse code
Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of ...
operators and expert SMS users.
Several mobile phones have Morse code ring tones and alert messages. For example, many
Nokia
Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporatio ...
mobile phones have an option to beep "S M S" in Morse code when it receives a short message. Some of these phones could also play the Nokia slogan "Connecting people" in Morse code as a message tone. There are third-party applications available for some mobile phones that allow Morse input for short messages.
[Nokia app lets you key SMSes in Morse Code](_blank)
1 June 2005, Boing Boing
''Boing Boing'' is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twice won ...
.[Nokia files patent for Morse Code-generating cellphone](_blank)
12 March 2005, Engadget
''Engadget'' ( ) is a multilingual technology blog network with daily coverage of gadgets and consumer electronics. ''Engadget'' manages ten blogs four of which are written in English and six have international versions with independent editori ...
.
Tattle texting
"Tattle texting" can mean either of two different texting trends:
Arena security
Many sports arenas now offer a number where patrons can text report security concerns, like drunk or unruly fans, or safety issues like spills.
"Schooling fans on good behavior"
''sportsbusinessdaily.com'' (21 November 2011). These programs have been praised by patrons and security personnel as more effective than traditional methods. For instance, the patron doesn't need to leave his seat and miss the event in order to report something important. Also, disruptive fans can be reported with relative anonymity. "Text tattling" also gives security personnel a useful tool to prioritize messages. For instance, a single complaint in one section about an unruly fan can be addressed when convenient, while multiple complaints by several different patrons can be acted upon immediately.
Smart cars
In this context, "tattle texting" refers to an automatic text sent by the computer in an automobile, because a preset condition was met. The most common use for this is for parents to receive texts from the car their child is driving, alerting them to speeding or other issues. Employers can also use the service to monitor their corporate vehicles. The technology is still new and (currently) only available on a few car models.
Common conditions that can be chosen to send a text are:
* Speeding. With the use of GPS
The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...
, stored maps, and speed limit
Speed limits on road traffic, as used in most countries, set the legal maximum speed at which vehicles may travel on a given stretch of road. Speed limits are generally indicated on a traffic sign reflecting the maximum permitted speed - expres ...
information, the onboard computer can determine if the driver is exceeding the current speed limit. The device can store this information and/or send it to another recipient.
* Range. Parents/employers can set a maximum range from a fixed location after which a "tattle text" is sent. Not only can this keep children close to home and keep employees from using corporate vehicles inappropriately, but it can also be a crucial tool for quickly identifying stolen vehicles, car jackings, and kidnappings.
See also
* Instant messaging
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...
* Personal message
In computing, a private message, personal message, or direct message (abbreviated as PM or DM) refers to a private communication sent or received by a user of a private communication channel on any given platform. Unlike public posts, PMs are only ...
, also called private message or direct message
* Messaging apps
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...
* Chat language
* Enhanced Messaging Service Enhanced Messaging Service (EMS) was a cross-industry collaboration between Samsung, Ericsson, Motorola, Siemens and Alcatel among others, which provided an application-level extension to Short Message Service (SMS) for cellular phones available on ...
* Mobile dial code
A mobile dial code (MDC) is a grouping of 3 to 10 numbers following either a "#" "##" "*" "**" used to create a short, easy to remember phone number. Historically MDCs were used for repair related purposes by landline and wireless carriers. More r ...
* Operator messaging
* Telegram
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...
* Tironian notes
Tironian notes ( la, notae Tironianae, links=no) are a set of thousands of signs that were formerly used in a system of shorthand (Tironian shorthand) dating from the 1st century BCE and named after Tiro, a personal secretary to Marcus Tullius Ci ...
, scribal abbreviation
Scribal abbreviations or sigla (grammatical number, singular: siglum) are abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in various languages, including Latin, Greek language, Greek, Old English and Old Norse. In modern manuscrip ...
s and ligatures: Roman and medieval abbreviations used to save space on manuscripts and epigraphs
* Comparison of user features of messaging platforms Comparison of user features of messaging platforms refers to a comparison of all the various user features of various electronic instant messaging platforms. This includes a wide variety of resources; it includes standalone apps, platforms within we ...
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Text Messaging
2000s fads and trends
Computer-related introductions in 1985
Online chat