[dahart]

You’re not accounting for the time it takes to compose text, and use thumbs to type text. I can’t stand trying to plan outings with people via text because it’s so damn slow and the message size is so small. We always end up calling each other to talk it out because it’s many times faster.

[lotsofpulp]

I remember group projects in college where we would sit together, but because we were all using laptops and had full keyboards, it was quicker for us to type our thoughts in a group chat on the laptop than to verbally converse with each other even though we were all sitting within a few feet of each other.

[dahart]

Typing with a keyboard is a good point - it’s fast. I can average almost twice my Boggle score if I type instead of writing.

I agree you can read faster than listen, but I just don’t buy that typing is faster than talking though, not for conversation. When you talk, the speaking and the listening are overlapping. Sentences are generally understood before the speaker even finishes saying them. That’s doesn’t happen with text chat. When you type into chat, the communication is serialized. There are reasons a group sitting together might use devices instead of talking, but I find it hard to believe that efficiency of speech is really a primary reason, unless you’re talking about sharing media like sources, images & movies, quotes, references, code, etc. for a group project.