Tina Lalangas, a student at George Washington University, says she relies on away messaging to keep up with friends.
(Michael Robinson-Chavez -- The Washington Post)
By Laura Sessions Stepp Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 9, 2004; Page C01
Hours after the college freshman killed himself by jumping from a dormitory balcony, his classmates at George Washington University were whispering about the form of his farewell.
They heard he had posted an "away message" on his computer. "Goodbye," he wrote to friends with access to such postings on a Sunday evening in April. Then he typed his initials. Or so they heard. D.C. police say only that he left some remarks behind on paper and in his computer. What he actually did is less remarkable than how matter-of-factly the students talk about this newest shape of a suicide note.
Why wouldn't he leave an away message? That's how everyone they know communicates these days.
Away messaging, a function of instant messaging, is this generation's automatic way of telling online buddies, when the sender's not online, where he or she is, or is not, 24-7. It's no more remarkable to a 20-year-old than the telephone answering machine is to parents. If you can't imagine letting your 150 closest friends know that you're in the shower, it's a good bet you're 30 or older.
Today's young people are way more tribal than the rest of us, according to social researchers like Hugh Mackay. "They can't get enough of each other."
Feeding this herd mentality is text messaging (on cell phones), instant messaging and away messaging. In 1997 America Online began offering its Instant Messenger service. Called AIM, it allowed users, including non-AOL subscribers, to post short notes, known as IMs, to individual friends, who would receive them immediately. Other companies began offering the same thing, and today some 3 billion to 5 billion IMs are sent every day, a large proportion of them from teenagers, according to Francis deSouza, CEO of IMlogic, a software company. One major attraction: Unlike blogs or Web sites, they're usually free.
From the beginning, the IM package included away messages. Young people, says deSouza, were the first to catch on to the general concept known as "presence," and away messaging is now as common on campus as sagging dormitory couches.
"I don't think I know anyone who does not do away messaging," says Russ Tanguay, a rising junior at GW.
Tanguay tends to post one-liners: "Cleaning the fish tank" or "On the phone." Other students put their spin on quips from politicians, philosophers or pop music stars, as in: "Looking for Rhonda at the Jersey shore. I wish the Beach Boys gave better directions."
GW sophomore Tina Lalangas spots the reference to the tune "Help Me, Rhonda" on her computer late one afternoon last week. It makes her smile as she settles into what has become the first thing she does once she gets home from her camp counseling job.
