texting

texting, act of sending short messages with cell phones, usually using the Short Messaging Service (SMS).

SMS was developed in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s, and the first text message was sent on December 3, 1992. An SMS commercial service was launched in the United Kingdom in 1995. Text messaging did not take off, however, until it became possible to send messages between the four main British cell phone networks in 1998.

Because typing text into a telephone keypad was cumbersome and the number of characters in a text message was limited, a form of shorthand evolved, especially among young people. This included such shortcuts as UR for “your” or “you’re” and BRB for “be right back.”

In addition to basic communication and entertainment, other uses for text messaging were developed, including the announcement by activists of demonstrations on the streets of China, Ukraine, and Kuwait and clandestine flirting in societies in which informal contact with the opposite sex was frowned upon. In South Africa counselors were sending information on patients’ use of antiretroviral drugs to combat HIV/AIDS through text messages to researchers at Cape Town University. Through text messages Indian politicians were being summoned by staff members to vote on new laws or make up a quorum in parliament. A new computer system was being rolled out in the United Kingdom that would enable text reminders of criminal court sessions to be sent to witnesses. In May 2005 America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response (AMBER) Alert warnings of child abductions in the United States began to be sent by text to those who chose to receive them, and, as of 2018, 924 children had been recovered.

The number of messages sent in the United Kingdom grew from 1 billion in 1999 to some 30 billion in 2005. In the United States text messaging emerged later but expanded rapidly. From 30 million messages sent in the United States in June 2001, the monthly traffic grew to about 7.3 billion in 2005 and 14 billion in 2008. SMS messaging reached its peak in the United States with 2.3 trillion messages in 2011 and in the United Kingdom the next year with 162 billion messages. In 2012 the number of SMS messages sent worldwide peaked at just under 7.8 trillion and has declined since then because of the rise of texting apps like Facebook Messenger, WeChat, and WhatsApp. The major wireless companies report that users now do more texting than talking on their cell phones.