“Hey! HRU?” Can you guess what this text message abbreviation stands for? It shouldn’t be too hard; I gave you an easy one.

What about this one, “IMO u should CM”? The first abbreviation says, “hey! How are you?” and the second abbreviation, translated into normal English, says, “in my opinion you should call me.” Cellsigns.com, a mobile marketing website, tells us the number of text messages has grown by 250% each year for the last two years. This large increase in text messaging is not a bad thing for cell phone companies, but is it bad for the text messagers themselves?

“I have unlimited text messaging on my phone plan and I definitely need it,” said Raquel Flores, freshman sociology major.

Text messaging is great for sending a small message back and forth. It also makes no noise, increases the amount of people you can talk to at one time and is a great workout for our thumbs. The only problem with text messaging is the personal disconnection it causes between people, friends and family.

“The uncertainty reduction theory was introduced by Berger and Calabrese. URT, in an over-simplified form, suggests that when a person meets a stranger, in initial interaction, the person hopes to reduce uncertainty about that stranger,” said communications professor Mary Lynn Henningsen. “In other words, when we don’t know someone we try to get information about them to make them seem more predictable to us. We do that through a variety of strategies like asking questions, talking with the person about potential similarities and generally paying attention to the conversation.”

The possibilities are endless when you are asking, “How can I speak to someone?” Sending messages via Facebook or MySpace, e-mail, AIM, or sending a quick text are all different, modern ways of communicating. In actuality, when we think of our original question, “How can I speak to someone?” none of the possibilities really fulfilled our original goal of speaking to them. In some way, shape or form, we got into contact with them, but we did not verbally communicate with one another.

“URT would suggest that people need to reduce their uncertainty about the other person through communication. Although the method of gathering information about others may change, the need is still the same,” Henningsen said. “Using unobtrusive methods like Facebook allow people to gather information about others without having the same amount or type of initial interaction. The person still hopes to understand the other person’s behavior better. The information being used has just changed.”

Yes, we could just dial the phone and converse in that way, but if we have the time to go see and speak to someone physically and verbally why don’t we? Why is that not an option?

Text messaging has set a new level of communication around the world and it is not necessarily a good thing. Asking someone on a date, breaking up and fighting are all things that should not be handled through text messaging. Yet sadly, we all do it. Let’s please not let the advancement in technology take away from our natural human instincts such as speaking to one another.