Is texting the new talking?

According to figures from a recent study, the average British teenager sends a whopping 80 text messages each day.

Unfortunately this means the teenagers of Britain are spending the time they could be using to do their homework, to learn, to socialise (face to face) etc to send text messages instead.

Dr. Martin Joffe, a paediatrician based in Greenbrae, California is concerned that the high level of texting could be resulting in anxiety, distraction, falling grades, repetitive strain injury and sleep deprivation.

Other physicians and psychologists are also beginning to express concern about how such a high level of texting can affect users. Only recently experts have discovered that high internet usage in teenagers increases their risk of developing depression later in life, could texting eventually cause a similar result?

Parents seem to take far more notice of the amount of time children spend watching T.V and playing video games than they do on how much their children are on their phones. With so many unlimited texting plans now available on mobile phones it is easy for children to get carried away with texting and it is important we continue to reinforce how important face to face interactions are.

Interacting with others on a personal level teaches us so much about how to interact with others and helps us to build skills which we won’t develop from simply tapping a keyboard. Though texting is a fantastic and useful resource, we must not under value the age of method of talking face to face.

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