Compulsive texting affecting teen girls’ grades

The study on compulsive texting was done on about 200 eighth graders and 200 11th graders in a Midwest town.

“Compulsive texting is more complex than frequency of texting”, said study co-author Kelly Lister-Landman in a statement.

The New York Times has a hot scoop: Teens text. But youngsters who check their phones continually, snap if you interrupt them and are so preoccupied with texting that they skip sleep and don’t get their work done may be compulsive texters, a new study says.

“I don’t think texting is causing academic problems – I think it’s an attention-span issue”. Boys send texts to their peers as a way to provide information, while girls rely on their texts to develop a relationship, whether with the family or in a romantic setting, or interact socially with their friends and classmates.

“Girls in this developmental stage also are more likely than boys to ruminate with others, or engage in obsessive, preoccupied thinking, across contexts”, Lister-Landman said.

So basically compulsive texting, like compulsive gambling, and likely compulsive behavior in general, turns you into a twitchy, lying dirtbag. The quantity of texts didn’t affect the teens so much as their inability to pull away from their devices. “It would be helpful for parents to look for signs of whether texting seems stressful for their teens, particularly if they have difficulty cutting back their texting or seem anxious when they are unable to text”. “Do they feel compelled to look at it at all times, rather than just answering texts they get?”

The study found that compulsive texters have overall lower grades than their peers, confirming previous studies that found that college students who texted while doing homework have lower grades than students who abstained. Apparently, the latter is a huge issue, because for a few, texting comprises most of their social life.

Only 35 percent of the group in the study reported actual face-to-face contact outside of the school setting.

Check out Teen Vogue’s October issue cover star, Elle Fanning.