The New York Times reported (11/21/2010) about a teenager who texted 27,000 times in a year – that is 900 texts a day.
A study released by Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine done in 20 public high schools in the Cleveland area last year using surveys of more than 4,200 students, found that teens who test 120 times a day or more were more likely to have had set or used alcohol and drugs than children who didn’t send as many messages. The study said that those who text at least 120 times a day are nearly 3 1/2 times more likely to have had sex than their peers who don’t text that much. This study coincides with studies from the Kaiser Family Foundation which found that about half of children ages 8 to 18 send 118 text messages a day. The study also found that only 14 percent of their parents set rules limiting texting.
Share this information with the parents of your school. While educators have some responsibility to deal with texting, the major responsibility is that of families of these students. Obviously if a student is spending so much time and energy texting, they are not doing schoolwork, homework or studying.