Back in the early to mid 90′s, the “in” thing in terms of communication gadgets are pagers. But then again, prior to the time it became affordable to ordinary people, the said service is mostly used only by doctors due to the urgency of their jobs. Then, of course, more and more people decided they want to have one as well and so more companies started to offer the service, as such, the rates became more affordable enabling more common people to take advantage of it as well.

In the late 90′s to the early 2000′s the pager became completely forgotten with the advent of text messaging. Text messaging became a massive thing that it completely obliterated the pagers. For one, you no longer have to relay your message to an operator, thereby, taking away any censorship or inhibitions (of course depending on your comfort level with the person you are sending a text message to.). Although, in some cases it may be a good effect, but then again there are still disadvantages. Ergo, as we go through the disadvantages of text messaging, let us also go through some points I’d call Text Messaging Ethics.

• Text Speak – I myself, am guilty of this one. Text speak is a way of coming up with abbreviations or shortened forms of words. The reason this evolved was because in the early years of text messaging, characters are limited per text message. Unlike today, that cellphones has a better capability in terms of longer messages. Back then, you’d have to be creative in terms of making yourself understood with as few characters as you can. Thus, the evolution of text speak, which sadly, is the predecessor of the Jejemon language. ETHICAL: If you are sending a text message to someone you just met, hardly know, more so to someone who works for a company you are applying at, never use text speak or jejemon language! For crying out loud, please at least let them know you can spell words right, if coming up with set of grammatically correct sentences is giving you a nosebleed.
• Spamming/Flooding – I used to be guilty of this one as well, until a friend called my attention to it. Of course, the reason I was sending all those forwarded quotes and other inspirational text messages, was because I want my friends to know that I remember them every once in a while. But since I have tons of friends who are in the call center industry or have their own businesses, their sleep is priceless. Therefore, when a friend gently called my attention that she wakes up every time she hears her phone beeps because she thought it was something regarding her business, only to find out that it was a forwarded message, she is robbed off of precious minutes of her sleep. Since I treat sleep the same way- a highly priced commodity, I realized she has a valid point. ETHICAL: It is okay to send your friends inspirational quotes once in a while, but make sure you don’t over do it and try to send it when you know that they are awake.
• Be cautious when sending text messages to married or committed friends of the opposite sex – I could not stress this more than enough, having had a series of fights over this issue with my husband for the last couple of weeks, to the point of losing my marriage. Please! For crying out loud, when you see a text message on your husband’s phone at 4am from someone he doesn’t even knew for 6 months, not even his agent and for something that’s not even a life and death situation, there is nothing decent about that!!! Especially if you know that you are sending a text message to someone who is married! To add to that, the girl is also married with a kid. You don’t tell a guy friend who is married about your marital problems at 4am in the morning via text messages. Especially if you are married yourself, you might want to put yourself in the shoes of the spouse of your friend. ETHICAL: Choose your words and think about how it might sound like to the partner/spouse of your friend. If it sounds “pa-cute”, rephrase it!! And please, look for your girlfriends to tell them about your marital problems!

Well, it’s a great thing that my husband got to read the last part of this entry prior to me posting this. I certainly hope that dumb girl gets to read this as well, as I’m very much tempted to send her a link, or better yet, to send her husband a link to this entry!