"What's Your Community?"

"Text messaging is a community"

What makes text messaging a community is that it is your friends and people you know. It includes ways to speak to someone and be a part of a community without picking up the phone. It’s a quick reply to an answer or a way of discussing something when you’re in a hurry. What tends to hold this community together is it gets to where it is going and people have time to respond. In the long run they are still connected; they just have the ability to respond when they can. Normally your interests, needs and values are expressed through your conversations and you are able to sometimes express yourself in ways you might not in person. The people in your community tend to share the same things, from just wanting a quick response to trying to fit conversation into their daily busy lives. Tensions that could arise from this community however, could be miss communication or the emotion behind someone’s voice.

I fit into this group because my life is very busy and I don’t always have the time to talk on the phone. I enjoy being part of this community because it allows me to still have a life with my friends and family while trying to maintain school and family life. I never had this available when I was growing up; in some ways this may have been better because when you are able to speak to someone on the phone you get a lot more from it. However, this still provides me with the comfort of knowing I’m close to the people I care about and can maintain relationships even when I am super busy.