Last week I posted a little practice guitar amp I was trying to sell on Craigslist.  After a few attempts to getting potential buyers to call me back after they expressed interest, I finally got an email response from one individual.  I offered my number to arrange a place to meet and instead of a call I received a text message.  The remainder of our conversations on where to meet and at what time consisted of texting.  This was a bit odd to me until I met my buyer outside our local mall;  It was a high school student,  I should have guessed so.  I assumed this was an antisocial  individual who was maybe too shy or felt that I was not worthy of his time to provide me with a personable conversation.

You may not be surprised to hear this, but one in three teens send on average 100 text messages per day.  This now is  the preferred method of communication for teenagers.  This seems to be a logical transition as I graduated high-school almost 10 years ago and some of my friends have just reached of legal drinking age,  though our main conversations are still primarily by phone, plans and short miscellaneous things are conversed through texting.

But there has to always be down side to too much of something you say?  Well of course, what would an article about too much texting be without consequences?  Well there’s texting in class, bullying which can’t be heard, but the most troubling thing is texting while driving.  I’ve seen this first hand, a teenager managing the steering wheel with his knees while he blasts a text message.  My immediate reaction is to honk and chastise, but I was afraid that would startle him and cause him to swerve into someone.

To put myself in a teens position, I can’t see texting as all bad.  Think about it as a teenage guy, no awkward silences, and that false courage to ask a girl out because you’re not face to face, which makes rejection a little more easier to handle.  with that said,  just like the internet, there needs to be a fair amount of supervision.  Kids will get bullied through text or send inappropriate messages to people they don’t know.  Just with anything else, there is a certain level of responsibility that must be practiced not only by the teens, but their parents.

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