Lyndsey Decker glances down at her Cingular phone during class and slyly slips it beneath her desk, where she presses keys, and slowly, quietly closes her cell. Her professor is none the wiser.
Decker, a senior sociology major, is no more a conspicuous text messenger than her fellow classmates who drink coffee, take notes and read magazines during lecture.
Text-messaging students are everywhere – texting in class, restaurants, elevators and sometimes while driving. A recent study showed 36 percent of college-age students now use text messaging, according to Opinion Research Corporation.
Decker has no reservations about texting when she’s bored in class, she says. Sometimes she tries to be sneaky about it but other times she doesn’t really care. Regardless, she’s never been caught, and she’s not worried about being scolded by professors, she says.
Kristen Yanuk, a junior communication major, thinks her professors see her constant text messaging but she could care less.
“I think they notice, especially because I’m a junior and I’m in a lot of upper-level classes, which are smaller,” she says, adding that many of her classmates are also texting, and the professor probably doesn’t mind because it’s quiet.
Sociology professor Alan Neustadtl says cellular text messaging hasn’t been a problem for him.
“I don’t see anybody ever doing it,” he says.
Did we mention Decker is one of his students?
Even though he overlooks students occasionally text messaging, he has noticed e-mail and instant messaging are becoming a problem during labs.
“I think that part is distracting but it’s all part of the ADD culture,” he says, noting multitasking is ingrained in this generation’s college students.
Historically, the lack of any sort of wireless service in classrooms eliminated the problem of texting and instant messaging, Neustadtl says. While many classrooms have now been equipped with wireless Internet, some, especially basement classrooms, don’t offer cell service.
Despite occasional service restrictions, new BlackBerries, Sidekicks and other gadgets make technology more alluring and user-friendly than it has ever been.
“What’s cool about it is it’s all converging into one technology,” Neustadtl says, “which ultimately may be a good thing, but I find it hard.”
Convenient and impersonal as it is, text messaging is not just reserved for one-question conversations or small talk when you’re bored in class. It’s the new dating tool.
“It’s not as personal and [boys] don’t feel like they’re going to mess up or look stupid,” Yanuk says. “I think calling people is even the next step up. I know from personal experience a lot of boys text message me or IM me before they call me.”
And just as we’ve discovered drunk dialing was the best way to bare our true feelings for our crush, drunk texting is quickly climbing the charts of our “Top 10 Ways to Embarrass Ourselves While Intoxicated.”
“I think text messaging is a big thing when you’re drunk, just because you’re drunk and you like someone,” Yanuk says, “Especially boys because they don’t like to talk on the phone.”
One text messaging no-no is texting while you drive, some students say.
“It’s way too dangerous,” Yanuk says. “If somebody sent me a text message and they needed a response when I was driving, I would call them instead.
“Not that that’s not a distraction,” she adds.
Sophomore business major Julia Ogorodnikova agrees, for the most part.
Ogorodnikova rarely texts while she drives because it’s so dangerous, she says.
“When I’m in traffic or at a stop light then, yeah, sometimes I text,” she says. “But I usually wear an earpiece when I drive.”
The real kicker is when your cell phone bill lets you know it’s time for a new text-messaging plan.
Ogorodnikova used to constantly pay overage charges on her cell phone bill, but instead of getting a new plan, she dropped her job.
“My mom and I used to have a deal where whenever I go over my minutes or text messages, I would have to pay the whole bill,” she says, adding that she ended up paying the entire bill almost every month. Since she stopped working, her mom foots the whole bill.
Yanuk also had overage charges regularly, but she took a more traditional route and adjusted her cell phone service to include a text-messaging plan.
“My mom used to make me pay for it, but now Verizon has this plan where it’s like $6 a month,” she says. But the $6 only covers texts to and from other Verizon users.
“I do get annoyed when someone who doesn’t have Verizon texts me because my mom doesn’t want to pay for it,” Yanuk says.
Fees aside, text messaging has become the easiest way to zone out in class without ever getting caught. Just remember to keep your phone on silent.
Contact reporter Sara Murray at murraydbk@gmail.com.
