In my busiest texting month, the month prior to the birth of my daughter Molly last June, when my friends were often texting me with messages like, "still pregnant?", I only sent about 50 texts ("yes."). Then again, I'm ever-so-slightly older than the average teenager, who seems to be permanently attached to his or her cell phone, which, I might add, should more precisely be called a text phone. Do teenagers even talk on the darn things?
Julie Zingeser, a 15-year-old from Rockville, MD, doesn't seem to have the time. That's because Julie texted her friends 6,473 times in one month. With all that texting, who has time to talk?
That's more than 215 texts every day. Is that possible? This reminds me of those blasted AOL CDs the company flooded the market with back in the 1990s, discs that offered 1200 free hours of Internet for 30 days, even though there weren't that many hours in a month.
How can a girl send that many texts while still going to school, bathing, and (hopefully) doing homework?
According to Julie, she does not text while performing on the pom squad (whatever that is), playing on her lacrosse team, or at dinnertime, because her parents don't allow it (thank goodness). But that means that basically any other time, she's texting nonstop.
"If I really look into it, I think it is affecting my focus and my closeness with my family," says Julie. "I'm not 100 percent present," when texting, she says.
Pam, Julie's mom, pays $30 per month for unlimiting texting, so isn't worried about the financial cost, but rather the psychological toll. "I'm concerned that in the long run they will be addicted to instant communication and gratification," she said, and thinks maybe kids of Julie's generation are uncomfortable with face-to-face conversation.
This article in The Washington Post doesn't say what, if anything, Pam plans to do to limit Julie's texting habit. I'm not sure what she really could do, other than take away the phone.
Would you limit the amount of texting your kids do in a month?
Photo: The Washington Post
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