Texting is certainly keeping you in touch with someone — friends, family, co-workers. And, if these people matter to you and keeping a close relationship with them is one of your priorities, then constant texting might not be clutter.

On the other hand, if texting is replacing a deeper relationship with these people, all the texting would be clutter. Additionally, it might be prohibiting you from focusing on people you’re with in the present, because you’re constantly looking at your phone.

Assuming it takes you on average 30 seconds to send a text, you spent a little more than 122 hours last month texting. If there are 720 hours per month, and you slept for 240 of those, you were probably awake about 480 hours last month. So, if you were writing texts 122 of 480 hours, about a quarter of your waking time was spent sending texts. And, since this doesn’t include reading texts from people who write back to you or thinking about your response, it’s possible texting is consuming half your waking life.  [emphasis added]