http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/09cell.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&oref=slogin

The above article is titled “Text Generation Gap: UR 2 Old (JK)” and is from the business section of the NYTimes. The article’s publishing date is March 9, 2008.

As the title suggests, the article is about the function of text messaging and how it continues to impact and change our society. Specifically, the article focused on how children and young adults use texting to communicate with others and how distanced their parents tend to be from the way that they use their phones. Texting produces an “in” lingo between children tends not to be understood by their parents. The article mentions other examples like this—cases where parents and children are distanced due to texting—but it also mentions the few cases where parents feel closer to their children because of texting than they would otherwise. Still, the article discusses how kids who text with their parents tend to have to teach their parents how to use texting, and often parents still have trouble with it so that communication via text is not always fluid.

This article relates to class in myriad ways. First, and most obviously, texting creates a network among people who text that is distinct from the network of people who communicate with each other. These texting networks seem to function as something private and secretive between kids. As the article discusses, kids live on their cell phones, texting away with their friends all the time, and have therefore developed certain code phrases to use when their parents may be around and reading over their shoulders. This network of texting brings kids together in a way that is distinct from the kind of relationships kids have with their parents. The network is not open to just anyone to use; there is a certain amount of skill and understanding that is involved with text messaging and therefore with being involved in the network.

Second, text messaging changes the overall communication network between people, producing local bridges and structural holes between parents and kids. Assuming parents (and grandparents, other adults, etc) have a network of communication that relies on phone or email and assuming kids have a network that heavily relies on texting, bridging the two does not come naturally. The few parents who can text with as much ease as their children serve as local bridges between the younger generation and the older generation. Other properties like focal closure and triadic closure are also at work here. For example, if three kids are friends and two of them text each other constantly, chances are the third friend will be pulled into the world of texting, too.

In general terms, the article explains how text messaging on cell phones is changing social networks between the generations.