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AnchorDesk

David Coursey
Save the kids from drugs, sex and, oh yes... SMS

David Coursey
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Wednesday, December 19, 2001
TalkBack!Add your opinion
Parents, I hate to interrupt the holiday spirit--glad tidings and all--but I want to warn you about the cellular telephone industry's sinister plot to rot your children's minds and rob them of their precious youth.

This isn't a column about the danger that may or may not be posed by cellular radiation going straight into your beloved's brain. No, this is an addictive disorder that has already struck millions in Europe and Asia.

In countries overseas, users--mostly young people--partake in this activity some 750 million times each day. It's reported that in Finland, young people spend as much as 90 percent of their allowance to pay for it and related items.

I am talking about the Heartbreak of SMS, and how it can turn kids--and even some adults--into button-pushing, instant-messaging automatons, all under the guise of using an ordinary cellular telephone. It is up to each of us to stop this menace before it gains a foothold on these shores.

OK, FORGET THE MELODRAMA. I'm overstating it to make a point. SMS won't lead to eternal damnation or utter ruin. But I still think its insidious effects are something for concern.

SMS, which stands for "short message service," is a means of sending instant messages from one cellular telephone to another. Limited to 160 characters, the messages--often sent as a series of abbreviations that would make a classified ad writer proud--are being used by European teenagers to maintain their social circle and cliques regardless of time or distance.

Kids love it because it puts them in immediate and constant touch with friends. Cellular telephone carriers--think of them as SMS pushers--love the little messages because they burn up connect-time or per-message charges. That's where the allowance money goes.

I don't like SMS very much. Or, more to the point, I don't like kids having SMS very much. If you want to see an example of why I feel that way, visit a new site, called SMA.ac, which is intended to draw American youth into the SMS frenzy that has already swept Europe and, to a lesser extent, Asia.

SMS.ac is a Web portal that brings cross-carrier SMS access to the Internet. The challenge for SMS in North America has been that the various wireless carriers' networks didn't talk to one another. That meant, for example, that a Verizon customer couldn't send an SMS message to a SprintPCS user.

THE PROBLEM has been addressed by the Canadian carriers and is being addressed globally by a Nokia-led consortium announced last month at Comdex.

But SMS.ac thinks it's ahead of the curve by offering the ability to send a message to any SMS user today. The company has created SMS aliases to hide your telephone number. It also offers a variety of SMS user clubs, including those for SMS flirting, dating, and, yes, sex, as well as classmate and people finders, and other services aimed at what looks like a high school and college crowd.

Users can also take a "mobile poll" to offer their opinion on a variety of issues. Tuesday's poll--I'm not making this up--asked the probing question: "Do you prefer dogs or cats?" When I cast my feline vote, the canine lovers were ahead 52 to 48 percent.

The good news about all this is, SMS may not catch on here--at least not like it has in Europe, where SMS is used every day by tens of millions of young people. Some of my analyst friends tell me the wider availability of PCs and instant messaging in the United States already fulfills some of the need Europeans find for the service.

PARENTS, I UNDERSTAND why your kids need cellular telephones--it's a safety and keeping-track-of-them thing. But SMS messaging isn't about any of that.

Already, the modern workplace has turned many adults into desk-bound droids, whose major function as "information workers" is interacting with a keyboard all day. Human interaction may be limited to telephone calls, e-mails, and instant messages rather than actual human contact.

While this fulfills the desire for income and even meaningful work, it changes how we interact with people, our community, and our physical being in negative ways.

SMS messaging allows young people to become little information workers at a very young age, when they should be studying, working at part-time jobs, playing outside, participating in sports, or just learning about the world they will soon command. Somehow a life significantly defined by sending SMS messages--the lives that some Euro-kids seem to have--seems a terrible waste of a youth they will never experience, or enjoy, again.

Do you think that SMS is a potentially unhealthy technology for young people? Or am I being a fuddy-duddy? TalkBack to me! And take my QuickPoll below.

Should we discourage young people from using SMS?
Yes. David is right. Let's not help them misspend their youth.
No. David is wrong. The more kids communicate, the better.
I'm neutral. No one really knows whether SMS is good or bad.

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