The Cost of Texting

An article in the Washington Post tells the story of a 15-year-old Maryland teenager who racked up over six thousand text messages in one month. She texts at home, at school, in the car, while walking her dog, while doing her homework--and she even takes her cell phone to bed with her at night, where she sometimes is awakened by the sound of a new text message. The young girl told the Post writer that she would die without her text life. She admits that she doesn't focus well on homework, and she texts with others while her parents are in the same room. They have no idea with whom she's communicating or what they are saying to each other. The article reports that some teens actually text their parents while they are together in the same house.


While the writer of the article pointed out certain advantages for teens with cell phones (being socially affirmed, being accessible to parents), experts have a growing concern that there are downsides, such as declines in spelling, word choice, and writing complexity. Some teens have difficulty staying on task, and some of the more horrific uses of texting are bullying and sexting, where teens text nude pictures of themselves and others.

I watch all of these growing communication technologies with great interest and concern--as a professional in the communications industry, as a mother, and as someone who loves God's gift of language and wants to be a good steward of it. While not inherently evil, the new tools of communication often seem to be leading us to a less intimate, less thought-ful discourse. They divide us from the very people we ought to be closest to. We can't seem to get enough communication-as-entertainment. Blogs have become the horses and buggies of online communication as Web users seek more instantaneous, more constant means of following others and being followed. So now we Twitter, and our tweets are reduced to no more than 140 characters at a time. Blogging and Facebooking take too long to read and write. We can't be bothered with the time consumption of correct spelling, and so we create our own texting language that allows us to shorten words to letters and avoid punctuation and capitalization.

The state of things leaves me with more questions than answers, like these:

1. Why is texting necessary? If you are unable to reach someone, there is usually the option of leaving a voice mail. And clearly if you are texting and get an immediate response, you could be talking verbally (GASP!) together.

2. Why do parents buy plans that include texting? We have simply opted for a plan that charges for texting, and we let our teen cell phone user know that if she sends/receives texts, she will pay for them out of her own pocket. It hasn't been a problem because she doesn't like to communicate by texting, and she knows we mean it when we tell her she will pay. Katie's school has had to establish a cell phone policy this year. Students were texting during class, cheating on tests, and being disruptive. I recently read of one blogger who spoke at a teen retreat. The youth leader challenged the teens to leave their cell phones behind, but few did. The phones were an obvious distraction to the teens who were supposed to be focusing on their relationship with God. Why, oh why, don't parents take control of their children's use of cell phones? Allowing our children to use a tool that we own does not mean they now get to call the shots about how that tool will be used.

3. I must confess that I have a concern about this need for constant, instant communication. It has become a god that we are willing to sacrifice privacy, intimacy, and quality relationship to all too quickly. What could teenagers possibly have to say to one another in the middle of the night that is so urgent that it can't wait till morning? I see this in my own children, as they enter the house and are instantly drawn to the computer in the basement, much like the airline passengers in the TV show Lost were inescapably pulled to the magnetic fields of the mysterious island. Why is Katie unable to do her homework unless she has her Facebook page pulled up to answer--instantaneously--any message that appears? What does it say about us, this craving for constant communication? How could it ever, always, be meaningful, purposeful, effective? And all of this constant superficial conversation leaves little time for the kind of conversation that should be happening in a family, between friends, and even husbands and wives.

It will be interesting--and a little scary--to see what all of this brings in years to come, as a generation that has always had cell phones and social networking comes of age. I wonder how people will do their jobs while they feed their need for entertainment--because work is often not very entertaining. I wonder how parents who have grown up not talking with their own parents will communicate faith, values, and life lessons to their own children. Will they even be able to pull themselves away from their computers and cell phones to procreate? Will children remember fondly the storybooks of their childhoods, as I do? As I hope my own children do? Time--and Twitter--will tell.

Postscript: This article discusses some of the harmful effects of social networking on children. The findings are interesting, but not surprising.