Text messaging by mobile phone is the most popular way for young people to communicate.
Text messages are cheaper than calls made on mobile phones, and they have become the primary way for young people to keep in touch.
One young woman in Dublin city centre tells RTÉ News,
I send more text messages than I do phone calls.
Cost and convenience is also a reason given for texting by another mobile phone user.
Gerard O'Neill from market research firm Amarach Consulting says there is now a generation of people who have grown accustomed to being interrupted through the day by invasive techonolgy. He believes that it has started to affect people's behaviour and
The way in which they process information.
With just one hundred and sixty characters available when communicating by text, abbreviations for commonly used words are now a familiar language for many.
Donncha Ó Croinín from the Linguistics Institute says this change could be positive as it will
Make people think about how they write messages.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 20 June 2000. The reporter is Annabel Egan.
