Parents, beware!  If your teenagers are spending a good chunk of their free time texting, they may end up with problems a lot more serious than a pair of sore thumbs.

According to recent research done at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, those teenagers who spend the most time texting are also those at greatest risk for dangerous or unhealthy behaviors such as drinking, smoking, and sexual activity.  The study was conducted in an urban county in the Midwestern United States by surveying high school students.

The researchers labeled anyone who was sending in excess of 120 text messages each school day a “hyper-texter.”  (I can’t help but wonder if you spend that much time each day telling people what you’re doing, how much time do you have left to actually do anything?)    The researchers found that 19.8% of the participants fit this description.  The majority of these hyper-texters were minority girls who came from a lower socioeconomic background and did not have a father living with them.

The study determined that there was a strong association between those in the hyper-texting group and a variety of negative behaviors.  These participants were 40% more likely than their less-frequently-texting counterparts to have smoked cigarettes.  They were also twice as likely to have consumed alcohol and 43% more likely to have been binge drinking.  The hyper-texters were 41% more likely to have tried drugs and 55% more likely to have engaged in a physical fight.  They were also 3.5 times more likely to be sexually active and 90% more likely to have been with four or more sexual partners. (Wow! I take it all back. I guess you can squeeze a lot of activity between your 120 text messages.)

According to information from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, cell phones have become the most essential communication tool for teenagers over the past few years.  Texting with friends is the number one way for teens to keep in touch with one another and calling on cell phones is the second most popular.

Much of that probably has to do with the explosion of cell phone ownership among teens within the past decade.  In 2010, approximately 75% of 12- to 17-year-olds had their own cell phone, as opposed to only 45% in 2004.  And 72% of teenagers send and receive text messages nowadays.  Only 51% were texting back in 2006.

One-third of teens across America are texting more than 100 messages each day.  Boys still text much less frequently than girls, though, with boys averaging about 30 texts per day and girls up in the 80 texts per day range.

Unfortunately, cell phones weren’t found to be the only problem area in the Case Western Reserve study.  Hyper-networking, or spending more than three hours a day on social networking websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace, was also linked to potentially harmful activities.  Previous research has shown that spending copious amounts of time on social networking sites is connected with sleeplessness, increased stress levels, poor grades in school, and depression.

In the current study, 11.5% of the participants were considered hyper-networkers.  Those teens were 62% more likely to have smoked cigarettes than the rest of their peers.  They were 79% more likely to have consumed alcohol and 69% more likely to have been binge drinking.  The hyper-networkers were 84% more likely to have tried drugs and 94% more likely to have engaged in a physical fight.  In addition, they were 69% more likely to be sexually active and 60% more likely to have been with four or more sexual partners.

The Case Western Reserve research was not designed to show cause, so we don’t know whether the hyper-texting is leading to these outcomes or the risky actions spur on all the texting.  In any case, it seems that it would be a good idea for parents who aren’t already doing so to place some serious restrictions on their teenagers’ cell phone use.  Especially since according to the data from the Pew Research Center, those teens whose parents limit their daily texting are less likely to report regretting a text they sent or involvement in sexting. In the meantime, we may need to rewrite that old saw to read, “Those who “can” do. Those who “can’t” now sink into counterproductive behavior, while spending every single remaining minute telling their friends all about it.

As Maurice Chevaliersaid in the musical Gigi, “I’m glad I’m not young anymore.”

Beth Levine
www.jonbarron.org