Yesterday I posted the “Rutledge's Text Messaging Developmental Stages” on my Psychology Today blog, Positively Media.  Clearly it’s a loose adaptation of Erikson's psychosocial stages and will, I hope, be entertaining to 'psychnerds' as one of my Twitter followers remarked.  (I take that moniker as a compliment, BTW.)  Joking aside, there are, however, observable differences in how people use text messaging based on their adoption age and rate.  It has to do with how they engage in interpersonal communication and whether they view texting as a replacement for some kind of contact rather than as a way of making contact in its own right, not in comparison. In the meantime, I had a charming email from my mom saying: “Being a digital immigrant I don't know how to get to your developmental stages thingy. “ That made me laugh out loud, while simultaneously being grateful to have a reader even it is is my mother.  It also reminded me that, like with text messaging, … [Read more...]