My allergy siege is over, thank you. I can breathe again. My eyes have stopped watering. Which means I can get back to work. And the first story I see today is…
Study Finds Teens Texting Compulsively!
They can’t stop, and it’s the girls more than the boys ( http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/compulsive-texting-takes-toll-on-teenagers/?src=twr ). Something like 12% of the teenaged girls in this study, which involved some 400 teens, are compulsive when it comes to texting. (It was only 3% of boys.) Compulsive as in “compulsive gambling”–they just can’t stop, even if it’s messing up their lives.
Now, be patient with me, I’ve never sent or received a text message in my life and have no plans to start now. In fact, I’m not so sure I know what texting is. Is it that stuff that goes like “i got 1 4 U,” or “lmao, mdf, C U at wankys 2morro”?
For this they lose sleep and get mad if you try to talk with them face-to-face? Granted, homework isn’t the most enticing of pursuits, and it’s never hard to distract kids from doing it–but you would think the texting would be just as boring as school homework.
Yo, folks, this is our culture! This is what we ask for, and this is what we get. We consign our children to institutions that teach them that their age-group peers are the most important people in the world, the only people who understand and care about them or find them at all interesting: and both parents work, all the time, that’s how the baby winds up in day care: and what the schools don’t teach ’em, Hollywood will–and we’re amazed they turn out like this?
I love teenagers. They’re fun! They have lively minds.
But when you marinate them for long enough in our schools and in our culture, they’re not fun anymore.
And let the text messages testify to the liveliness of their minds.
I know adults who are compulsive texters as well. I use text-messaging when I need to do so. I just went to a wedding reception and sat a table with three other adults. All had smart phones with them. Mine was in my pocketbook where I intended to keep it. I just looked at these people. No one speaking with each other and each individual focused on that little screen before them on the table with their fingers working away at the keypad. (Sigh!)
Yes, I’ve seen that very thing in our local pizza parlor: a bunch of people, who presumably know each other, seated around a table not saying a word, just staring at the little doohickey and pushing buttons. I sigh, too.
I also have never texted anyone or received one since I don’t have a cell phone. I do have an iPad that can function as a means to text but I have not used it. My wife has a cell phone for her daily calls from our daughter and they will text from time to time. I love freedom, so no cell phone. When I communicate with someone I look them in the eyes. When I go somewhere I don’t have to be concerned with someone interrupting me with a phone call. What is more annoying than standing in line to check out and someone is on their phone speaking as if they are the only ones in the store.
The big problem now is teens sexting each other. Who needs porn when school girls are revealing all on the phone’s screen.