Posted 11/02/09 at 09:37:04 AM by Paul Lilly

According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, an overwhelming majority of Americans feel text messaging while driving should be made illegal. Not only that, but over half surveyed said those caught sending a text while behind the wheel should be punished just as harshly as drunk drivers.

"If you're going to drive, drive; if you want to talk or text, pull over to the side of the road," Constance Drake, 71, of Toms River, J.J., said in a follow-up interview with the New York Times.

Americans don't seem split on the issue, at least according to the poll. Only 3 percent of respondents saw nothing wrong with texting and driving at the same time, while the other 97 percent disagreed. And around 80 percent said it should be made illegal to talk on a cellphone while driving, unless it's a hands-free phone. That's up from 69 percent in a 2001 ABCNews poll.

What's your stance on texting or talking on a cellphone while driving? Hit the jump and sound off!

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Posted 08/03/09 at 10:01:26 AM by Paul Lilly

Cyber-bullies aren't the only dangers today's teens face when staying connected through social networking sites and other forms of digital communication. According to Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, excessive emailing and text messaging is leading young people to form "transient relationships," putting them at a higher risk of suicide when the friendships break down.

"I think there's a worry that an excessive use, or an almost exclusive use of text and emails means that as a society we're losing some of the ability to build interpersonal communication that's necessary for living together and building a community," said the 63-year-old Archbishop in an interview published on Sunday.

According to Archbishop Nichols, networking sites encourage kids to put a greater importance on the number of friends they have rather than the quality of friendship. When that network collapses, it can be "a key factor in their committing suicide," he said.

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Posted 10/27/08 at 05:25:42 PM by Andy Salisbury

It just so happens that text messaging isn’t the soulless form of communication that we’d all thought. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Jeffery Hancock of Cornell University has recently run an experiment on using only text messaging as a form of communication to convey feelings, and the results might surprise you.

The study consisted of 44 pairs of participants, all using only text messaging as means of communication for 20 minutes with the goal of finding out as much about their partner as possible. They were also asked to talk about something that was stressing them out. To help promote communication, one member from each pair watched either a scene from Sophie’s Choice (where a mother in Auschwitz is forced to choose which of her two children would be put to death) or a clip that simply involved small talk.

The results came out with astonishingly high accuracy. They showed that every participant was able to accurately convey their partner’s state of mind, mood and felt a real connection with them. Those teamed up with the watchers of Sophie’s Choice were also notably saddened after the chat.

So as it turns out, texting is a very viable form of communication. It allows us more time to formulate an answer to whomever we’re speaking with, and to be more honest with them than they might be over the phone or email.

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