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GENERATION X (BORN 1965-1980)

celebrate this great (Gr8?) milestone? The initial prognosis doesn’t look good: in 2014, for the first time, the volume of texts started to decline, with SMS messages in the UK falling from 152 billion to 145 billion. More recently, Ofcom reports that around 65 billion messages were sent in 2019, down from just over 74 billion the previous year.

But as it moves into its fourth decade, the text – although no longer the newest nor the most popular kid on the block – is morphing into something of a glamorous matriarch. The Joan Collins of the comms world.

As though to cement this new persona, that first text was sold at auction late last year for around £90,000. (How do you auction a text? As a ‘digital asset’, it’s complicated; suffice to say that you can’t frame it and hang it over the mantelpiece.)

Global grandees, meanwhile, are still texting away – and they’re definitely not apologising for it. In May, America’s First Lady

Jill Biden revealed she and the President are heavily into ‘fexting’ (fighting on text). Flotus didn’t reveal the content of their fexts, but it seems likely that someone knows, given that presidential communications (texts included) are preserved for the historical record.

If one of those (‘I h8 u’?) ever comes to light, the auction price is likely to blow Neil Papworth’s ‘Merry Christmas’ message out of the water.

This year, even Buckingham Palace took inspiration from texts, releasing a cute, crown-wearing corgi emoji called PJ to accompany jubilee hashtags. Gen Z was quick to point out that PJ is, technically, a sticker rather than an emoji (because he employs something other than a facial expression) but, hey, they’re trying.

As texting eases into middle age, the burning question is whether it can win round younger generations – after all, Gen Z has managed to save vinyl. We know they love anything that they view as being part of the ‘Y2K’ (year 2000) trend, so maybe there’s hope for the SMS yet.

Meanwhile, the text continues its journey from basic communication tool to nuanced art form, one which can now reveal much about its originator. We’ve yet to hear of a crime solved because a text message gave away the age of the perpetrator, but text analysis must surely take the place of handwriting analysis in a court case soon.

While we wait for the SMS to go retro-cool, here’s our handy guide to deducing the vintage of your sender…

The ellipsis has been identified as a classic Gen X trait although nobody appears entirely sure why this is. Possibly they want to give the impression that they’re too busy running the nation to bother with other punctuation… possibly it’s that their repressed anxiety (overt anxiety, you’ll note, is a millennial trait) means they aren’t confident enough to commit to a solid ending. The full stop is a bit final, while the colon might make them look like a Boomer.

Emoji use is also a Gen X trait, although a message sender of this age group will use them in isolation and may also attempt ironic usage. The latter will be based on something their Gen Z kids told them was cool (such as a skull or coffin

THE BURNING QUESTION IS WHETHER TEXTING CAN WIN ROUND YOUNGER GENERATIONS

emoji to mean ‘died laughing’) but that Gen Z hasn’t used in, like, forever.

Finally, Gen X use kisses. Lots of them. All the time. Relationship to recipient not important.

ON MESSAGE

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