+ Texting: Communication with consequences

All of us are guilty at one time or another of answering our phone in the car. For Teenagers, oftentimes preferring text messaging to speaking on the phone, they are increasingly abusing this privilege. The thought of a teen texting while driving scares the blank out of me. I do have a sound reason to be concerned. In a survey by AAA & Seventeen Magazine, of 1,000 teens ages 16 and 17 interviewed nationwide, 46 percent said they text-messaged while they drive.* Factor in the lack of experience at the wheel coupled with texting and you have a recipe for disaster.

While we know there can be physical dangers to texting what will be the long term consequences socially remains to be seen. The article by Laura M Holson of the New York Times, Text Generation Gap” U R 2 Old (JK) she provides a variety of positives and negatives to debate. It has made parents and teens closer with almost daily communication but, on the flip side, it has also allowed teens to keep their parents at bay especially when teens are using their own type of pig latin while texting.

The innovation of text messaging will continue to have broad societal changes, and we are just beginning to study the effects. An organization that has begun just that is the Pew Internet & American Life Project. They have an database of reports and they have covered everything from Online Shopping to Cyberbullying. I highly recommend checking it out. There are topics there that would be of interest to just about everyone.

Whether it is texting or talking we should all be aware that there are consequences to our phone usage. When it is a daily activity for almost all of us we need to proceed with caution.

*Quoted from link provided