Do you keep Text Messages?

[CatInASuit]

Having seen that someone has kept every single text message she has received apart from the very first one that she deleted by accident, I wondered how old the texts were on my phone. I thought it was over the top until I realised I don't delete anything either?

Do you delete texts to keep them down or do you have a massive backlog as well?

[Orual]

I erase them periodically. The mailbox on my phone gets full otherwise.

[The Original An Gadaí]

For years I had a phone that only stored 25 texts and my SIM only has 25 permanent, Although my latter phones have 100s of messages space, I still have to delete most of them. I had texts going back to 2004 or 2005 until I had to remove some lately. I dunno if modern phones have that option but it would be nice to be able to easily backup texts onto a PC or whatnot.

[OneCentStamp]

I purge them about weekly.

[RabbitMage]

I empty mine out when it gets full, though I have a select few I've kept for a while.

[Marsilia]

I empty mine when the little warning message pops up, but generally, I'll delete most stuff every couple of days, unless it's an actual conversation. Those, I'll keep until the little warning message pops up.

[Hatshepsut]

I delete the commercial ones as soon as they come in. The rest I allow to pile up until my mailbox gets full.

I rarely need to search for an old SMS, but when I do it always amuses me as I scroll through stored texts in reverse chronological order. It's like a backward-running diary of my life: "Oh yeah, that day my son had three friends over for a sleepover ... oh yeah I went on a hike with Mia, that was fun ... wow, we sure were shocked the day Roy got fired ... yea, in the end they didn't show up to my dinner party but it went well anyway ...

If I don't have at least a few text messages about it, it never happened.

Speaking of which, have you guys in the US/UK caught up with Asia yet? I remember about 5 years ago an American-based member of a listserv I participate in asked "someone from Indonesia wants to communicate with me by 'texting.' What is 'texting'?" Those of us living in Indonesia just about laughed ourselves off our chairs.

I know that teens text all the time now - hence leetspeak - but is texting truly ingrained the way it is here? For example, I usually send around 300 texts/month according to my phone bill. My friends (who have more kids, are more social than I am, and also have husbands who text them [mine still uses voice communications, the dinosaur!]) think that number is quite low.

[Myglaren]

Only save the ones with addresses/instructions that I need then bin them once used.