CONCERN #5: IT GETS IN THE WAY OF MORE IMPORTANT THINGS
Ever wonder how your children can complete a homework assignment, sit down to a family meal, or even simply get a good night’s sleep with all the texting they’re doing? You’re right to worry. When the Nielsen Company did a study in 2008, they found that “American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008.” (That’s about 80 messages a day.) That sounds like a lot, right? Cut to 2010, when the Nielsen Company did another study and found that teenagers were, on average, “sending or receiving 3,339 texts a month. That’s more than six per every hour they’re awake.” Now, that really sounds like a lot, right? Cut to Greg Hardesty, a California father whose daughter, Reina, racked up a texting count of 14,528 in one month. Hardesty’s phone bill was 440 pages long. Clearly, keeping up with numbers is going to affect the way kids manage their school work, their actual, person-to-person interpersonal relationships, and their sleep time (very important for growing children). The New York Times concurs, reporting that “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.” Limiting texts via your cellular carrier, or with rules you set down with your children (or a combination of both) can help prevent a paperback-sized phone bill, as well as the distractions and lack of sleep that can come with it.
