Teens who can’t stop texting are a lot like compulsive gamblers

A 2012 Pew study found that 75% of teens have a mobile phone, and 63% say they text every day. Compulsive texting has now been linked to poor academic performance in a few teens because texters might be neglecting work and skipping sleep.

For the study, researchers surveyed 403 students in grades eight and 11 from schools in a semi-rural town in the Midwest, NBC News reported. They used this information to examine whether texting interfered with study participants’ ability to complete tasks; how preoccupied they were with texting; and whether they tried to hide their texting behavior, among other relevant factors.

“What is their relationship with phone use?” Withholding both could cause withdrawals (more mental than physical for texters), and those who are addicted will read and write texts in situations where doing so endangers their lives, like while they are behind the wheel of a auto. It’s not completely clear why that is the case, but it could be due to differences in how the two sexes communicate, with girls “more likely than boys to ruminate with others, or engage in obsessive, preoccupied thinking” when texting.

There’s no question that modern teens are more comfortable with cellphones than earlier generations, but there’s now evidence to suggest that a few of them are a little too comfortable. The quantity of texts didn’t affect the teens so much as their inability to pull away from their devices.

The study, which was published last week in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture, involved more than 400 eighth- and 11th-graders from the same school district.