PTOS--and everywhere else

According to a Washington Post story repeated in today's Journal Gazette, we're moving from PLOS to PTOS--Parent Texting Over Shoulder:

[P]arents are...becoming the fastest-growing demographic in text messaging...

In the past two years, use of the technology by those ages 45 to 54 increased 130 percent, according to M:Metrics, a market-research firm. By comparison, those ages 13 to 17 increased their text messaging by far less, 41 percent.

[...]

“Parents like the immediacy of it and that it is not intrusive. ... It’s become an important way of communicating with their kids,” said Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T Mobility, the nation’s largest wireless carrier. Children are introducing their parents to the technology; in a 2006 study commissioned by AT&T, 50 percent of adults who text messaged said they started because of their children.

Two trends are contributing to this shift in how parents communicate:

1. The slow growth of text messaging as a replacement for e-mail

2. As mentioned in the story, a growing desire for immediacy. We love e-mail because it's simple and convenient, but it's asynchronous, meaning there's no expectation it will be replied to immediately. That's not true of texting, of course.

If you're a parent, do you text your kids? And if you're a kid, ru ok w/dat?