The Internet just needs a new story to explode over and the latest is about text anxiety caused by the typing awareness indicator which is represented by three dots in iMessage. We’re also talking about notifications like ‘typing’ and similar alerts which show up in WhatsApp and Gmail Chat, for example.
When you’re in the middle of an important (deep, life-changing, emotional – take your pick) conversation, waiting for the other person’s response can be a grueling sensation. But maybe you should just throw away that phone if you can’t handle picking it up and talking directly to the involved party.
A recent Baylor University survey says women and men college students spend almost 10 hours and 8 hours a day on their handsets, respectively. Not surprisingly, participants pass away most of the time they use up on their cellphones for sending texts. The study puts it down at an average of 94.6 minutes per day.
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Published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions, emails take up almost 48.5 minutes of the respondents’ day, while Facebook has a hold over them for up to 38.6 minutes daily. Contradictory to popular assumptions about men being more engaged with technology, female students are apparently more likely to employ their devices for socializing.
Male students deploy the same number of mails as their female counterparts, but spend less time doing so. This supposedly means men send shorter and more utilitarian messages as compared to women. Don’t look at us sharply, Baylor University researcher Jim Roberts said it, not us. On a side note, 60% of the participants also admitted to being addicted to their phones.
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Since the Baylor University study is based on responses by 164 college students, we wouldn’t give too much weight to all of its conclusions. But the possibility of people getting addicted to their mobiles is not beyond comprehension. And the more time you spend text messaging, the more anxiety you face while awaiting a reply.