When text messages became popular, the holiday greetings made you smile. Today, I must tell all senders that the electronic greeting is, annoyingly, trite. The standard, mass text message that you send to your entire list of contacts doesn’t make the receiver feel special. If this were a competition, tradition and etiquette win hands down; a holiday greeting card and a telephone call are respected and appreciated more.
Here’s why you should think twice before sending a holiday greeting via text:
- You can help your friends and family members keep the joy alive by picking up the telephone and giving them a call. You may not know just how much it means for them to hear the voice of someone that they haven’t heard in a while. Besides they may be overwhelmed by a loss or stress and really just need to talk to someone.
- The message may not arrive on time or get through at all. Costa Rica’s cellular network, Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), reports that they have a capacity of 3.000.500 messages sent per second, however, during the holidays, the number of sent messages could exceed the processing capacity, and this is reflected in delays in sending and receiving texts. (Our larger networks in the States operate on 3G and 4G networks, so local data of this sort couldn’t be obtained.)
- The receiver may not have a data plan and will be required to pay for each text message.
Give your thumbs a break from writing text messages. If you really care, take the time to give your friends and family a call and stop sending those generic, costly text messages. –yvette caslin
Mom, dad and Taylor can all be on the phone at once when they reach out and call grandma and grandpa, who are thousands of miles of away. RCA’s cordless phone system with three handsets are $29.99 at Target.
Millions of individuals use Skype to make free video and voice calls, join the club.
