I don’t know about you, but I resisted texting for a long time.  It seemed to me that a phone call– carrying on a conversation with a real person– was preferable.  I remember hours spent on the phone with boy friends and girlfriends during high school.  In college, we wrote each other long letters to express our feelings during summer vacations.  Nothing was more exciting than to receive a handwritten letter from a special boyfriend or girlfriend.    But now, no one likes to talk on the telephone or write letters,  unless they’re over eighty.  Seniors must text or become extinct.

What happened to e mail?  It was so much easier than texting, and you could easily provide more detailed information.  But here’s what’s happened.  E mail has  become a garbage bin for spam.  I probably get 100 a day.  To “unsubscribe” is a hassle, and doesn’t always work. Consequently, If someone sends me an important personal email, I’m liable to miss it altogether because it  gets lost in a sea of unwanted emails.

Talking on the phone has pretty much gone out of style, except maybe with close relatives. And even my kids are often too busy to answer a phone call.  On the other hand, some people ignore their texts.  My problem is not that I ignore them, I simply don’t always  realize I’ve received one. Why?  Because my smartphone isn’t always in my back pocket.  It might be upstairs, or left out in my car.

The best thing about texting is the ability to send instant pictures.  But even those put an onus on the recipient.  You’re expected to reply instantly to a picture of a cat or kid or rose bush.  Sometimes it’s hard to think of an appropriate response. Expressions like  cute, great, awesome, funny, etc. are fairly trite.  But at least the person has the satisfaction of knowing that you received their photo.

Texting has even invaded social events like fund raisers.  I attended a benefit the other day, and you didn’t physically bid on the silent auction items.  In fact, you didn’t even have to see them. We were asked to take a seat, turn to a link on our phones, and then see pictures of the items for sale.  Then, there was some mechanism where you put in your bid over the phone.  Way too High Tech for me.  And truthfully, the auction items didn’t look all that appealing when you couldn’t see the real thing.

A lot of people think seniors don’t know how to text.  However, according to the people who track that kind of thing, 85% of us can.  We just don’t necessarily like it, especially if we have arthritic fingers or poor eyesight.  But if we refuse to text, we’ll soon  be out of the loop. Seniors must text or become extinct.