Rule of thumb

JOHN McCRONE investigates the irresistible attraction of text messaging and wonders: is it more to do with addiction than communication?

In psychology they call it a variable interval reinforcement schedule. And it is the best way to train a rat.

The key lies in the suspense. The rat presses the bar and is occasionally, randomly, after a variable number of presses, rewarded with a sip of Milo. The slight uncertainty dramatically strengthens the bar-pressing behaviour.

Texting is like that. You send, then wait. Eventually, unpredictably, your cell phone does its little brrt-brrt, its dancing jiggle, and you get your ego stroke. A message just for you.

It is addictive. Quite literally, say psychologists. But surely it cannot be so simple?

The allure of texting is certainly a puzzle. It was never predicted by the telecoms industry. The Short Message Service (SMS) protocol was added to mobile phones as an afterthought -- tacking on the functionality of Stone-Age paging devices for the few who might continue to need it.

No, the telecoms industry believed it would be video phones and mobile internet browsing that would be the next killer application after voice calls. Yet texting -- where you have to thumb several times to get a letter, and you are out of room after just 160 characters -- became the new social phenomenon.

Kids are doing it under the desk or in the toilets at school. Otherwise sensible and responsible people are texting while driving, while having dinner with friends, while watching TV. Teenagers complain of symptoms such as ringxiety or phantom ringing where they keep imagining the bleeping arrival of new messages.

Researchers like Kay Fielden, at Auckland's Unitec Institute of Technology, say schools are floundering with problems caused by the ubiquity of texting, such as text bullying and pupils who slip into "textese" in their work.

And the telecoms companies are making a fortune.

Announcing its latest financial results, Vodafone boasted of dropping phone rates in New Zealand. With the average annual bill of contract customers falling to $1416, and prepay customers to $264, our charges are no longer among the worst in the developed world, just mid-table.

Vodafone points out that its standard text rate of 20 cents a message can be cut to just two cents for those on a bulk-buy, 600 a month, top-up plan. Yet the telcos have made lavish profits from the text revolution.

It is not quite heroin or crack cocaine, but texting is an activity that appears to have a nation hooked.

For oldsters, the addiction theory makes a lot of sense. Texting seems such an inefficient medium. Phones are for calling, computers, with proper keyboards and spell-checkers, are what you would use for emailing. Texts just encourage a trivial, back and forth, chit-chat. Hi yah! See yah! Whatev-ah!

However, the text generation view it differently. For all sorts of reasons, texting has turned out to be a precision tool of social communication. The Generation Y and Zers (the under-12s) employ many channels of communication, but text now fills a special slot.

Ruth Lynskey, a 26-year-old Christchurch party organiser and publisher of e-magazine slynkey. com, is as you might suspect a power-texter -- although, she says, not a patch on the text-obsessed teenagers coming up behind her.

Lynskey remembers being the first girl in her gang at Christchurch Girls' High to even own a cellphone. Her friends clubbed together to buy her one for her 17th birthday.

"It was a bit of a brick, a silver one. I don't think you could even do text on it."

Well there wasn't anyone to text, or even really call, back then, she says. The first mobile was a bit of an ornament.

Things changed quickly. Her current mobile -- a surprisingly battered Sanyo flip-top -- is like an extension of her arm. With a juggler's dexterity, Lynskey demonstrates how she can text one-handed without looking at the keys. If you start young enough, texting is as easy as breathing.

"Is it an addiction?" she muses. Lynskey says her phone has got to be within reach, day and night.

"If I can't find it, I'll be getting very antsy. I'll be searching under the bed. The times I've lost one, I've had to get another one the next day."

Not having a cellphone is like being unplugged. Lynskey says she is thinking of leaving her flip-top behind when she flies to the Gold Coast for her holiday. But as soon as the idea is voiced aloud, the impossibility of it shows on her face -- the prospect of going cold turkey.

So what is this grip of the cellphone, and texting in particular, all about?

Definitely there is the reward aspect. Lynskey says it is great to have those little random moments of gratification sprinkled throughout the day, reminding you that you have a circle of friends, that you are connected.

Life today is so busy, so cut-up. Mum may not be there after school for the kids. Dad may be on a plane. Everyone is rushing around from one activity to the next.

A quick text can be squeezed into a spare moment, sending out a joke, a reminder, a "love you", to keep the social fabric knit.

Yet texting has taken off because it has turned out to be -- in its completely unplanned way -- a highly effective tool of communication; one that manages the contradictory trick of both lowering social barriers and allowing greater conversational control.

Lynskey says cellphones generally have an attraction over computers or landlines in that any communication feels direct, immediate, personal.

Call up a home number, or message a computer, and you are never quite sure who is going to be at the other end. It could be your friend's dad or granny who picks up the receiver or is logged on to the family machine. But a mobile guarantees intimacy.

However, actually speaking on the phone is often too intimate. Texting is then a big step back -- direct contact that allows you to chat with relative strangers or reach friends without committing to too much time. And also to say things that might otherwise never be said.

A lot of texts are boringly organisational. Lynskey checks some recent messages. A mate asks whether he left his sunglasses at her place. "He probably texted that as he drove away in his car."

At weekends, the texts fly as people try to work out where the action is.

"In five seconds, I can send a group text to 10 people saying, `Hey, I'm at the Tap Room. Are you out tonight?"'

Ringing around would not just be laborious, but involve delicate negotiations -- how to know if enough others will want to join in to make it worth bothering. Texting is indispensable, worth every cent, when your social life is still fluid and offers many options.

Lynskey says it has become pretty central to how boy meets girl these days. The story is you see someone you fancy, exchange numbers, and spend a few days text-flirting.

"You would never give a stranger your address or your home phone number, but your cellphone number is no big deal."

And once you have the number, speaking is too full-on, too full of potential for social gaffes. Texting is the easier choice. "You'd never call a guy and go, `Oh, hi, how are you? I'm thinking about you'," Lynskey says, mimicking a tongue-tied teenager. However, even a risque text preserves a social distance.

"It's safe, because if you decide you don't like somebody, you can delete them from your address book and ignore all their messages. Or you can be harsh and just text them you're not interested."

Texting offers this new mix in being both completely intimate -- instantly one-on-one -- but also highly controlled.

Lynskey says texters can get themselves into trouble because they transmit feelings or opinions they would never be brave enough to utter in person. She says often texts are sent in haste: "I'll push send and go, `My God, what have I done?"'

It is even worse if the message is addressed to the wrong person. One friend texted across a crowded party to warn girl A about the boyfriend-predatory intentions of girl B. A minute later, girl B was brandishing her mobile, demanding to know what this vicious message was all about.

However, Lynskey says it is the chance to craft what you say, to polish your barbs, witticisms and endearments, that is one of the secret draws of texting.

"In a conversation, often you don't get the chance to have your say. With a text, you can say exactly what you want without interruption." There is a certainty about getting through to another person which is addictive.

Lynskey agrees there are yet other elements to the psychological appeal of texting. There is a heightening of reality, a soap-opera aspect, that appeals to youngsters especially.

A text conversation is like creating a script in which you can be either sweeter or more of a bitch than in real life. And conversations thus created can be re-read forever. A whole text relationship, from first flirtation to last ugly argument, can be preserved forever, if you feel inclined.

Unitec's Fielden, one of many academics now studying mobile-phone use, says it is clear from a recent survey of 12 New Zealand schools that teenagers do indeed see texting as much a part of their lives as speaking or phoning.

And it is the combination of communicative immediacy and social distance which makes problems like text bullying -- especially among girls -- so insidious. What gets said is likely to be even crueller, the impact more personal.

Teachers complain that text just by itself is a distraction. Kids are so skilled they can message each other with the phone held out of sight. Teachers find it hard to catch them, but can tell their minds are elsewhere.

However, Fielden believes there is no point schools being luddite. Many just have blanket bans on mobile phones. But some -- the private schools, particularly -- are beginning to negotiate boundaries of usage.

"The students turn out to be quite sensible about it. They agree it should be for break time. And they volunteer that there should be no use of cameras. Or texting if there's a bullying problem."

Texting is new enough that its etiquette is still evolving. Fielden says one horrified teacher reported that after impounding a pupil's phone, the parents then texted to register their complaint. But other teachers are enthusiasts. One liked to be able to text straying students on field trips. Camera phones gathered material for use back in the classroom.

Lynskey, too, is seeing the social boundaries continuing to shift. In just the past few months, business contacts have begun to text rather than call.

"I thought it was much too informal to do it myself. But things are changing."

Lynskey says something else new is text spam -- local bars messaging her about their happy-hour specials.

The text habit is taking a stronger grip all the time. Yet technology is not resting and another communication revolution is on the horizon.

Wellington software entrepreneur Rod Drury says he has just got back from California, where all the hip types had web-browsing, touch-screen Apple iPhones. "They were so easy to use that they were being used in a social context. People were going `Hey, look at this website. Look at my photos on FaceBook. Look, this is the band I'm going to see next week and here's their video on YouTube'."

Instant surfing and instant imaging will add still further dimensions to people's social interactions, Drury says.

Social networking sites like FaceBook already depend on the same psychological mechanisms as texting. Lynskey has been an ardent FaceBooker for the past six months and says the computer "ping" to alert her to some new FaceBook activity is as gratifying as the familiar chirrup of her mobile.

Putting FaceBook on a teenager's cellphone does sound like the next killer application for the handset makers and bandwidth suppliers.

Lynskey says it is definitely about time to trade in her faithful old Sanyo for some $1000 web-enabled phone with a big screen. It might be just an ornament for the first few months. But once all her friends get one, we could soon be talking about the new addiction gripping our nation's youth.

 

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