Textalism

TW: This piece addresses what appears to be the "ism" in America. The uncontrolled text messaging of our youth, and if they are doing now they may continue to do it as they age. We do not have kids but our friends do and almost to a person they mention excessive texting a real concern about their kids. The stats are startling- 2,200 message per kid per month, 80 per day. And my understanding is that most schools prohibit fairly aggressively texting during school hours so they are squeezing about 15 texts per hour every day into their lives.

I am not a big texter (being an old fart), but I have done it, I think I understand its seduction- cheap, easy, mindless communication. Reading the article it stirs vague memories of prior crises relative to other communication media including TV, cellphones etc. I suspect this too shall pass but then I am living on the front lines of the issue.

From NYT:
"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.

...The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data on health effects. But Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who has studied texting among teenagers in the Boston area for three years, said 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,” she said. “Texting hits directly at both those jobs.”

...Michael Hausauer, a psychotherapist in Oakland, Calif., said teenagers had a “terrific interest in knowing what’s going on in the lives of their peers, coupled with a terrific anxiety about being out of the loop.” For that reason, he said, the rapid rise in texting has potential for great benefit and great harm.

“Texting can be an enormous tool,” he said. “It offers companionship and the promise of connectedness. At the same time, texting can make a youngster feel frightened and overly exposed...”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/health/26teen.html