Posts Tagged Addict
To text or not to text: when just enough becomes too much
I’m quite pleased that I have kicked (or at least cut down on) one of my more annoying and very unsociable habits. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that everyone is entitled to their vices but I was getting fed up of the looks that I was getting from my friends when we were on a night out, so I decided it was time to cut back…
I am of course referring to my addiction to text messaging!
Wikipedia tells me that a study at Queensland University in Australia found that text messaging is the most addictive digital service on mobile or internet (although I’m not sure if that is still the case, thanks to Facebook), and is equivalent in addictiveness to cigarette smoking.
However, there is a difference between receiving text messages from your mates, and receiving them from a company or service that you have subscribed to.
When I was buying a house I subscribed to text alerts from an estate agent, thinking that it would be helpful. But before long I was being bombarded with information on houses that just weren’t suitable, so after a while I started ignoring the texts.
I’m now quite wary of signing up to ‘SMS alerts’ through fear that my inbox will become full of mindless sales rubbish (rather than the mindless general rubbish that my friends send me!). So what would it take for me to sign up to a service again?
As our BBC project relies heavily on users subscribing to the alerts in the first place, and then actually paying attention to them – critical questions that we need to work out the answers to are ‘how do we persuade people that this is a service that they really need?’ and ‘how many text messages is too many’?
***Claire
Add comment March 27, 2008
