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For the first time, more college students are using smart phones than traditional feature phones, reports a new study from Ball State University.

Social media use leads to higher satisfaction among owners of smartphones and traditional mobile phones, according to a new report from J.D. Power and Associates. Smartphone owners who use their device to access social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, have satisfaction averages of 783 on a 1,000-point scale, nearly 22 points higher than smartphone who rarely access social media sites on their device. Currently, more than half of smartphone owners users their device to access social media sites via the mobile Web or mobile applications. While rates of mobile social media site usage are not nearly as high among owners of traditional mobile phones (9%, on average), satisfaction among traditional handset owners who use their device for social media is notably higher than that of traditional handset owners who don't access social media (754 vs. 696).

New technologies bring with it a requirement for new abilities. Back in 1954, dialing a phone was new and potentially confusing. Bell created a 10-minute film to explain it all.

Surprisingly, a study of deception in e-mails versus phone calls found that people were more honest in e-mails because they can be documented, saved and aren't real-time communication scenarios, which is when most people drop white lies. Technology isn't the gateway to rampant deception; instead, Toma and Hancock both suspect that our distrust of communication technology is more likely rooted in our fear of it. "We've evolved as a species that talks face to face, and evolution is a slow process, and we're interacting in a new environment where our basic assumptions are undercut," Hancock said. So, in a way, it's natural to expect people to lie more online. "Every time a technology is new, it elicits great fears. Many people are fearful about what it's going to do," Toma said. "So I think fears about deception stem from this general fear of technology and certain features of technologies that make it easy to lie."

"With the rise of texting, instant chat and transcription apps, more people are ditching the venerable tool that once revolutionized the telephone business, displaced armies of secretaries and allowed us to eat dinner more or less in peace. The behavioral shift is occurring in tandem with the irreversible fading of voice calls in general, prompting more wireless carriers to offer unlimited voice minutes. In data prepared for USA Today, Vonage, an Internet phone company, says the number of voice-mail messages left on user accounts was down 8 percent in July from a year ago."

In the digital age, we increasingly use written language in place of face to face chat or phone calls. But the advantages email, chat, and text give us in speed come with limitations in communicating emotional tone. Enter emoticons and emojis. Not just a playful supplement to language, these new tools allow for complexity in tone and emotion never before possible in written language, as well as provide new opportunities for creative expression. Rapidly spreading throughout culture, emoticons and emojis fill a void in written language that few realized we so desperately needed.

Jane Beard and Jeffrey Davis didn't realize how little they speak to their children by phone until they called AT&T to switch plans. The customer service agent was breathless. The Silver Spring couple had accumulated 28,700 unused minutes.

The increasing use of text-messaging by teens - and increasingly often, by younger children - has given some people cause for concern. They argue that the abbreviations used in texting are detrimental to literacy development. Spelling, grammar, phrasing - these are all somehow poised to suffer, critics of texting contend, because of the use of shortened words and sentences. Soon, they predict, students' essays will be filled with LOLs and L8Rs. But a new study from Coventry University finds no evidence that having access to mobile phones harms children's literacy skills. In fact, the research suggests that texting abbreviations or "textisms" may actually aid reading, writing, and spelling skills.

Copycense points us to the bizarre news that the Massachussetts state legislature has decided to ban Twitter from office computers. While Facebook is still allowed, and officials can still tweet via their mobile phones, it's banned on computers. The Legislative Information Services dept is claiming that it's because Twitter is "vulnerable to viruses," but that's fairly bizarre reasoning. Twitter itself is not prone to viruses. Some users may post links to viruses, but that's true on Facebook as well. Besides blocking all of Twitter seems like a sledgehammer approach.

One of the issues facing social business and social CRM strategies is the issue of whether customers want to use social media as means for getting customer support. As of now, the phone is still the most common way to provide support. But would customers be willing to engage in other ways? An infographic from customer experience analytics firm ClickFox organizes research on the subject and finds that two in three customers would be willing to use social media for customer service if they understood the tools better. The infographic also breaks down the cost per interaction of various types of engagement, and finds website visits to be the cheapest by far.

Do you know what the numbers 5683 and 3327 mean? According to a recent study, if you are a person who frequently sends text messages, your brain knows what these numbers mean and is unconsciously influencing how you feel about phone numbers you dial.

"No executive can afford to be a Luddite and dismiss all new media. Sometimes it's exactly the right way for you to spend your time (especially if you're "on the way up" and need to build your profile). But too many leaders dive in without thinking through the costs of social media (what else could you be doing with your time?). After all, in this crowded media landscape, sometimes what matters most isn't your use of 21st century technologies. Instead, it's the forgotten 19th century arts (handwritten notes, personal phone calls, and high-quality personal meetings) that can have the greatest impact." Dorie's article misses two important reasons that leaders might need to include social media as part of their activities: 1) Good leaders understand culture, and social media are an important part of culture 2) Good leaders understand media and their effects on how humans organize. Understanding, especially where media are concerned, is best gained through participation. If they were to take Dorie's advice, Napoleon probably wouldn't have read newspapers, Winston Churchill wouldn't have listened to radio, and JFK wouldn't have watched television.