Is Texting Having Health Effects on Teenagers?

The NY Times reports that the average American teenager sends and receives an average of 2,272 text messages per month - almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier and 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. “That’s one every few minutes,” says pediatrician Dr. Martin Joffe. “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.”

The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data but psychologist Sherry Turkle says it might be causing a shift in the way adolescents develop. “Among the jobs of adolescence are to separate from your parents, and to find the peace and quiet to become the person you decide you want to be. Texting hits directly at both those jobs.” she says. "If technology makes something like staying in touch very, very easy, that’s harder to do; now you have adolescents who are texting their mothers 15 times a day, asking things like, ‘Should I get the red shoes or the blue shoes?’"

Dr. Joffe says parents tend to be far less aware of texting than of, say, video game playing or general computer use, and the unlimited plans often mean that parents stop paying attention to billing details. “I talk to parents in the office now,” says Joffe. “I’m quizzing them, and no one is thinking about this.”

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Photo: girls texting by Eddy Pula. Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic

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The NY Times reports that the average American teenager sends and receives an average of 2,272 text messages per month - almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier and the phenomenon is beginning...

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