Addicted to texting?
Ever wonder why your teen doesn’t have time to do her homework or the dishes? If she could do it on the phone, she would!
By Robyn Addinall
Article originally in
Parent24
You glance over at your teen and they’ve got their heads down, staring at their cellphones. Are you faced with watching your teen’s flying-fingers and expressionless faces day in and day out? It’s no surprise really, not according to the stats on texting and Mxit.
Texting
In America, girls between the ages of 14-17 send up to 100 texts a day! Boys seem to be a little less talkative as the same age group only sends up to 30 texts a day. That’s a whole lot of textlish!
These stats from Mashable on The Rise of Text Messaging (in the USA) were somewhat shocking. We all know that texting is huge but I never realised just how huge. It’s no real surprise that texting has become the main source of communication, surpassing even email, phone and face-to-face conversations.
Mxit
South Africa’s most popular alternative to texting, Mxit, is a growing beast. Its user base grows by up to 28000, globally, per day! Who knew it was even possible!
I spent a lot of time on Mxit as a teen (an entire 4 years ago) and I remember being online for sometimes 8 hours a day. That’s why it’s not too hard to believe that up until February 2010, 18.8 BILLION messages were sent and received over Mxit.
It scares me that our teens find time for little else other than texting and being on Mxit. What happened to real life conversation? Family time? Spending time outside, in the actual sun?
As much as the amount of time teens spend conversing via their cellphones scares me, I can’t really judge them too much. Especially as I was there myself not too long and now I’ve just moved on to being a self-confessed Twitter addict.
What are your thoughts on the Mxit/texting rage? Do you set a good example for your kids?
Disclaimer: The views of columnists published on Parent24 are their own and therefore do not necessarily represent the views of Parent24.