Texting May Be Taking a Toll

[groovedaddy]

They do it late at night when their parents are asleep. They do it in restaurants and while crossing busy streets. They do it in the classroom with their hands behind their back. They do it so much their thumbs hurt.

Spurred by the unlimited texting plans offered by carriers like AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless, American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Nielsen Company — almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier.

The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation.

Dr. Martin Joffe, a pediatrician in Greenbrae, Calif., recently surveyed students at two local high schools and said he found that many were routinely sending hundreds of texts every day.

“That’s one every few minutes,” he said. “Then you hear that these kids are responding to texts late at night. That’s going to cause sleep issues in an age group that’s already plagued with sleep issues.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/health/26teen.html?th&emc=th

[trotsky]

1. Crazy.

Does any provider have a plan where you are limited to X text messages per month and if you go over, you don't get charged extra, it just won't work?

[Mythsaje]

2. I just don't "get" texting...

I spend enough time trying to type on a tiny keyboard at work... I'm not going to do it on my own time. What a pain in the ass.

[earthside]

3. I hope to god ...

... that this texting mania is a fad that will burn itself out.

My daughter texts incessantly ... and taking the cell phone away is problematic because we do use it frequently to arrange rides, make plans, know where she is, etc. (although that is all done verbally with me via a telephone call -- I hate texting).

Texting looks to me like the video communications that the humans on the Axiom had in the movie Wall-E. When you see a teen crossing a busy street while texting, that is exactly what it looks like.

Once again, parents are fighting the culture ... no help comes from the corporate cell phone companies.

Texting, video games, My Space, Facebook, parents are fighting a losing war against the excesses of the corporate culture that tells teens they absolutely must have all of these things.

[semillama]

4. I don't know

My wife's younger cousins (who are in their late teens) are actually communicating via videos uploaded to facebook, besides texting and phone calls.

[cosmik debris]

5. Don't worry,

Some one is bound to invent a way that we can actually talk to people and then those telegrams will be obsolete.

[mopinko]

6. these guys are making a cause and effect error, imho

i think these behaviors are a way of coping with stress, not the source. especially the late night part.

i am almost done with my last teenager, of 5 kids. i have been around this block a couple of times. they got it backwards.

[omega minimo]

7. no mention of ADD?