Francesca - Week 1: Digital Dialects

When I was an insecure, anxiety-ridden preteen, I was obsessed with overanalyzing the way people texted. And now that I’m looking back on it, it was honestly really creepy and concerning. I was terrified of being left out, so I would monitor how close certain friends were getting with each other by studying the similarities in their texting styles. I’d also carefully reference the texts of people I liked to pick out words and phrases that I thought would make me seem cooler. 

It did not, in fact, make me seem cooler. 


It made people wonder why I would read their messages and type for five minutes straight before sending “aight, thx.” 


Thankfully, I’m past that point in my life now. Even though I’ve left all the paranoia behind, I never stopped noticing the little choices and quirks that make everybody’s individual texting styles different. The more I think about it, the more I realize that texting can tell you a lot about a person–just maybe not as much as pre-teen me thought.


Like, why did my friend take out the extra “AOAOAOAOAOAOAOAOAO”s from her “LMAO”? Did she think the extra letters didn’t look good on the screen? Did they take too long to type out? Was I not as funny anymore? Could she have started texting a guy who’s allergic to enthusiasm and be changing her own texting style to impress him?


If you think that last idea came out of nowhere, no, it didn’t. Because that ended up being the real reason. 


And that’s what makes texting so interesting to me. The ways people type aren’t random. They’re affected by who people talk to, the things they’ve been doing, or hints they’re trying to send without explicitly saying them. The same experiences that shape who a person is often end up shaping the way that they type. 


Something that I think has grown more prevalent over time is the existence of “social media accents.” Back in 2021 when everyone was online, everybody’s texting style seemed way more unique. There were countless decisions to make: emojis or emoticons? If you chose emoticons, which ones? Which abbreviations should you use? 


While there’s still some variety today, I feel as though people have started converging on the same vocabulary and jargon. I mean, I literally sent a reel to three people and all of them responded with “bro what is ts.” 


Despite that, I don’t find myself running out of stuff to analyze. There are so many other things that I secretly pay attention to, like typing speed, spelling errors, rhythm, and the other little habits that shape someone’s digital personality. 


Maybe I’m still overthinking it. But unlike preteen me, I’m not analyzing texts because I’m scared of being left out. I pay attention because I genuinely like figuring people out. My friends are people who I want to understand better, and texting is just a window into who they are.


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