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Sore Thumbs and Texting
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Feb 23, 2006 04:19 PM
from the my-wrists-are-killing-me dept.
from the my-wrists-are-killing-me dept.
Ant writes "ABC News reports that text messaging, once seen as a way to send a short message without running up the expense of a cellular telephone/cell phone call, has become so popular that it poses its own public health problem: sore thumbs.
This comes from a survey and warning put out by Virgin Mobile, one of the largest cellular service providers in Great Britain. Virgin reports that 93 million text messages are sent every day in the United Kingdom (U.K.). One estimate for the United States (U.S.), whose population is five times as large, is 700 million text messages a year.
"
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Nintendo thumb (Score:1, Funny)
Oh come on now. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://godgab.org/)
First litigation? Someone else to blame? (Score:3, Informative)
It's just a poll, actually. So they have sore thumbs...big deal.
Arghh bad use of statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Tuesday August 30 2005, @10:49PM)
Doctor, doctor (Score:1)
What? (Score:5, Informative)
My text messages cost 10 cents per message. I'd have to talk for over 2 minutes to cost more than a text message and I can sure relay more information in that two minutes than most can in a text message and even get feedback during that time. Text messages have their uses but being cheaper isn't one of them. Besides, I thought the point of text messages was to annoy others trying to watch a movie in a movie theater.
once seen (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Friday October 24 2003, @12:44PM)
but seriously... (Score:1)
Shall I look out for (Score:1)
(http://www.a4fs.net/blog/)
This just in... (Score:2, Informative)
(http://www.booyahgrandma.com/)
seriously. That's like complaining about your legs hurting after walking 200ft, because you usually just do laps from the fridge to the couch. You can avoid soreness in your thumbs the same way you avoid soreness everywhere else: stretch your muscles (try shadow thumb wrestling), repetition, and don't go till it hurts. You know when you're getting near that point, just stop there.
IANAPFE (I am not a physical fitness expert), but I do play a lot of video games, A LOT of video games, and between that and the literally hundreds of thousands of characters I type on a daily basis for work, I've learned how to deal with digit soreness.
Umm, did someone forget about... (Score:2, Informative)
Other appendages? (Score:1)
(http://www.nuclearelephant.com/)
As opposed to other bodily appendages that have also grown sore because of the Internet?
Wussies. (Score:1)
(http://www.rowan.edu/~pitman/ | Last Journal: Monday December 18 2006, @09:53AM)
Maybe it's just me, but... (Score:2, Informative)
By my definition, a health problem is something that you need medication or a doctor's appointment for. If your thumbs hurt you, taking a break from texting is all you really need. An alternative would be to try holding the phone in your hand a different way- after all, a repetitive strain injury is a repetitive strain injury.
Poor Filipinos (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://godgab.org/)
SOURCE [wikipedia.org]
I personally don't like texting (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.stillsound.net/)
Pros for me:
-Have my computer send me alerts.
-Send a quick e-mail to someone from the road.
-Send a short message to someone discreetly in a location where talking on the phone would be rude/inappropriate.
-Get a message through to someone when the reception is there but not good enough to have a conversation.
Cons for me:
-Almost have driven off the road on various occasions while trying to punch in a message or read a message. Way more dangerous then just talking.
-Time consuming to communicate the simplist of concepts.
-Sore thumbs
-U.S. carrier pricing on text messages makes it not make much sense economically.
-Additional way of being in-personal in your communication with other human beings.
-Short messages can be easilly mis-interpreted. Have gotten several people mad at me for no reason just because they took a brief text message the wrong way.
Sore thumbs from the spam... (Score:2)
(http://www.creimer.ws/ | Last Journal: Friday January 26 2007, @12:40PM)
cellphone dialpad as keyboard (Score:2)
(http://dotpavan.googlepages.com/home)
Use Morse Code (Score:1)
Keep in mind that learning to send Morse code is far easier than learning to receive it since you can move at your own pace. In fact, when I took my amateur radio exam back in the distanct past when you were tested by the FCC at their office, the staffer didn't even bother with sending. She knew that if I could receive 13 wpm, sending that fast was trival.
Simply learning Morse code is the equivalent of sending 5 wpm, which is 25 characters or about one character every two seconds, probably better than a lot of text messagers can do with their tired thumbs. And you can do it without looking at a screen.
--Mike Perry, KE7NV, Seattle, Untangling Tolkien
Nothing to worry about (Score:1)
Umm...I mean...because of moving the mouse so much. Yeah, that's it.
Don't believe those estimates... (Score:2)
(http://www.scarydevil.com/~peter/ | Last Journal: Monday September 26 2005, @06:53PM)
That's odd... Texting has been practical in the UK much longer than in the US, where for the longest time it simply wasn't possible to send text between networks. There's so much more support for text in the UK and one sees so much more online evidence of a text 'culture' there that it seems unlikely that its per-capita text message use would be higher.
Virgin one of the largest...? (Score:2)
(http://garethpotter.com/)
Erm, Virgin Mobile is probably one of the smallest networks. It's certainly not one of the largest, and it uses T-Mobile's transmitters rather than having its own.
iqu
fuck this dumb quasi-news (Score:2)
(http://www.crapfilter.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday August 16 2005, @06:52AM)
Inexpensive? (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Wednesday March 30 2005, @04:16PM)
I just don't get it.
CmdrTaco's wrists are killing him... (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Friday March 24 2006, @12:46PM)
get a phone that takes dictation... (Score:2)
my new samsung a900 has a really functional speech-to-text function for dictating text messages right into the phone.
not useful for a location where you have to be quiet (the library, etc.), but much easier any other time.
http://www.samsung.com/Products/MobilePhones/Spri
User Interface (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/)
This is why I always roll my eyes (Score:3, Informative)
Based on these statistics, people in the UK send roughly 50 times as many text messages each year as people in the US. Factoring in the relative population sizes, on average we send 250 times as many SMSs as you guys do.
You might not use those "useless features" on your phones, but we most certainly do. Entire message boards exist solely to compare the picture quality and associated features of the various camera phones, which is a serious deciding factor for some people when buying a new phone...
Something strange with the statistics (Score:2)
Oblig VG Cats (Score:2)
(http://www.joeandmonkey.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 21 2003, @03:44PM)
US vs Europe (Score:2, Informative)
As the statistics say (not very clearly), texting is far more popular in the UK (and I would assume Europe, too) than the US. Cue lots of americans saying it's expensive and crap and don't understand why it's so popular.
Reason is that texting is cheap and universal in Europe (inc. the UK) because of the GSM network prevalent there, plus all sorts of organisations jumping onto the texting bandwagon to encourage people to text more.
n00bs! (Score:1)
It's the wrists (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Tuesday August 28 2001, @07:17AM)
OT: Giving people unlimited data but charging for text messages is asinine.
UK texting is cheaper than US texting- duh. (Score:1)
I text, but it costs me more than a regular phone call (entirely dependent on your plan).
My experience is that 'SMSing' in the UK and Europe is *cheaper* than a phone call, while the opposite is true in the US.
Why is it more expensive in the US if the bandwidth usage is less??? WHY?
It's because it's a "cool feature", that's why.
'In Network' calls on my plan are included in my plan fee, yet I must pay extra to use less bandwidth.
Wrong (Score:2)
http://files.ctia.org/pdf/Wireless_Quick_Facts_Oc
text messaging vs. email (Score:2)
Sore Thumb's? (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Friday April 25 2003, @05:47PM)
--
1101010010010001111100100101000
Re:Incorrect multiplication? (Score:1)
Actually.... (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Tuesday June 06 2006, @01:50PM)
Re:Incorrect multiplication? (Score:1)
What, are they trying to say that Americans dont have the text messaging skills that they do??
Re:Incorrect multiplication? (Score:2)
That's not twice as often. It's less than 1/100th as often.
Re:Americans are wealthier (Score:2)
(http://www.recompile.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday April 20 2004, @04:10PM)
I pay $55 a month for my cell phone. I don't pay per minute (e.g. I can talk all day long, all month long) and I don't pay for long distance (I can talk to someone clear across the country all day long)
Texting would COST ME MORE MONEY. No thanks.