Washington Post feature examines the impact of text messaging on teens. Does it affect attention span, family relationships, writing ability, social life?
Duh. (Although I confess that my recollection of my teen years — long before texting, cell phones, faxes, computers, cable TV, etc. — is that I lived in a parallel dimension unreachable by parental communication, particularly when it was time to take the trash cans out. Can’t blame it on texting. Nor my short attention span.)
A teen featured in the article sent more than 6,700 messages in a month, or a more than 200 a day.
I can believe it. I attended a concert recently. The audience included a busload of high school students. Maybe they listened to the music. But each spent the entire performance peering intently at texting devices when they weren’t madly thumbing messages — often to each other judging by exchanged glances and body language.