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In 2004, less than 50 percent of 12 to 17 year-olds in America owned cell phones. Now, 75 percent do. If you spend some time on a bus, in a mall, or even at a school, it will come as no surprise that many teens prefer to communicate via cell phone. But according to the Pew Research Center, fully two-thirds of teens prefer to use their cell phones for texting friends rather than talking with them. The explosion in texting and teen cell phone use has implications for parents, educators, and lawmakers.
Throw sexting in to the mix and you have a more complicated issue.
Not that many teens snap and send sexually explicit pictures on their phones (Pew says about 4% of cell phone users) but many more receive them (15%, according to the Pew research.) It can have serious criminal implications, as this recent case in Portland shows. In the 2011 legislative session, Oregon lawmakers may consider revising Measure 73, which voters passed just last month, and make a misdemeanor category for certain sexting between teens.
We'll broadcast this show live from Grant High School in Portland but we want to hear from other places too. Are you a teen or parent of a teen who texts? Should high schools ban cell phone use during the school day? Have you ever sent or received a "sext" message?
GUESTS
Amanda Lenhart: Senior Research Specialist for Pew Research Center
Vivian Orlen: Principal, Grant High School, Portland
Charles Hunter: Dean of Students, Grant High School, Portland
Beth Slovic: Reporter, Willamette Week
Trent Mitchell: video production teacher, Shorecrest High School in Shoreline, WA
Tagged as: cell phones · teen
Photo credit: Garrett / Creative Commons
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I consider texting behavior "dissociation". My 30-something friends get lost in their texting as I watch them and meditate on the unintended consequences of technology.
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texting - all the smiley faces and shortened words etc is new, not novel, and another way of juggling symbols - so far incomplete, not fully or perfectly formed -
for the active of mind it will be a tool- for the dull, it will be a trap = everything is that way, though, isn’t it
sexting seems more a symptom of how poorly parents and society manage the human condition for their new ones than a phenomenon on its own - i mean- singing about spooning under the moon in june was just about as sexually titillating in its day as soft-porn is today - that is to say, suggestive but hardly informative, more likely it is dis-informative
‘falling in love with love’ sounds so sweet but continues to be an ensnarement, a false goal, along the way to personhood
[continued below, with apologies for taxing your attention span]
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[continued from above with apologies for taxing your attention span]
we are human animals, not sexless, hormone-less dolls - self-awareness starts with all of each of us, not just the ‘angelic’ parts, and certainly not by making other parts dirty or naughty
shame - for some of our actions, perhaps, but for being as we are born?
it’s not the gadgets, it’s the commercialism, it’s the misuse/mis-mixing of sexual allure and merchandizing - i mean, our cars are sexy, why shouldn’t a teen feel even sexier?? that’s a rhetorical question, eh? but it is also a truth.
-good lord, i saw an ad in AARP for sex videos for older adults-
what is the difference? - if they don’t know better by that age, how should the young find out - copying the faults of their elders, or experimenting innocently on their own
finding out that sex is not necessarily love is a big step toward a healthier individual - it should be like finding that an acquaintance in not necessarily a friend, rather than the sudden revelation of it as a cause of pregnancy, disease or depression.
texting/sexting as dissociation, possibly, but also as association de novo?
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As a professional driver on a community college campus I am most alarmed by continued texting while driving. Yes, it annoys me that public use of cell phones is so far removed from the telephone etiquette of my youth. But far worse is that every day I see sloppy and dangerous driving from people punching buttons on their devices. I've also heard concerns that laws against handheld devices are causing more people to text in their lap, hoping to avoid detection, rather than up closer to their view of the road. I'm in a taller vehicle and I see it all, and it scares me. Some day I may not be able to compensate for their distracted-driving errors.
As an aside, I surmise from the number of people who grin while texting, that it's the new wave in flirtation.
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Schools should not ban cell phone use during the school day. That won't fix the problem.
I haven't sent a sext message yet because most of my intended recipients would receive great joy from turning me over to the man! Plus, is TOL an appropriate forum to admit such things? What's done on the Internet or mobile phone networks probably stays there forever.
Paranoia stinks but privacy is eroding too rapidly during the Terrorist Age.
Parents are responsible to raise their children with values and thoughtfulness so their children know when it's appropriate to use their cell phones.
But many are lazy with the individualist's proclamation, "I can do whatever I want because I'm not hurting anybody." These evil doers become defensive when you point out their insensitivity and thoughtlessness.
We then seek to ban or legislate away "negative behavior" by imposing ever more limitations on the majority who conduct their lives responsibly and thoughtfully.
Ban the enslavement of those who behave responsibly!
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I think that it is really unfortunate that so many parents purchase cell phones for their children and pay the subsequent monthly bills.
If parents would just stop coddling their children and cut the purse strings so many problems could be averted. Children under the age of 18 have no business having a cell phone and certainly should not be involved in contracts that last for years and financially commit themselves or their parents to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Cell phones are a luxury. They are certainly not a right and are not necessary.
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Cell phones are a luxury. They are certainly not a right and are not necessary. -- staggerlee — Fri Dec. 10th 8:59a.m.
Amen to that! I've worked places (McDonald's, for one) that had rules against carrying, let alone using cell-phones while on the job, yet certain of my co-workers boldly flouted this rule right in front of not only the Manager and Assistant Manager, but in front of the proprietor, as well! And nothing was EVER said to them -- by anyone!
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Oh, by the way, any of you kids out there who think it is a sexy (or fun) thing to do to send cell-phone pictures of your breasts or privates to your boyfriend or girlfriend should know that you can be charged with and convicted of creating and distributing child-pornography. If you are convicted, you will be required to register as a sex-offender FOR LIFE!
Now do you really want to do that?
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I am in the process of adopting an eleven year old girl from Northern California. My husband and I have decided that at age 13 we will provide her with a limited use phone for her safety and as a privalage she can earn, or have taken when appropriate. Over the Thanksgiving holiday I brought the young lady to meet my family for the first time. My adult sister and brother have no children, my father is a huge football fan, and my mother was engrossed in the kitchen. I tried to keep her entertained by coloring, helping in the kitchen, and chatting, but after a few hours I began to feel bad for her. There were no kids around and little to do so I let her play with my iPhone. She was delighted, and actually showed me things about my phone I didn't even know!
In some ways I think it's a shame that kids are so engrossed in their phones, but on the other hand it's just technology moving ahead. (I wonder what my parents thought about me listening to my walkman all the time?)
With technology you have to get on board or get out of the way. I think advances in technology create a new level of responsibility for parents and children. As a parent I will have to keep up with the latest trends- just so I know the dangers that may be threatening my child, and how to talk about them and encourage her to make the right decisions. What's scary is when technology, like a smart phone with full internet, is givin to a child by an adult who doesn't understand what it's capable of.
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The new technologies have added a very positive dimension to the communication abilities for the deaf community.
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I'll be darned, that's great.
I've heard of new tech for the blind too but I don't know if it has been brought into cell phones.
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There is an obvious generational divide here. This is probably a cultural area that will develop more or less as fast as technology allows, relatively independent of any "rules" or standards that can be imposed.
The tools (phones and computers) are too easily used privately and confidentially to be subject to behavioral controls. Unless we are willing to directly control the networks with some sort of Big Brother oversight of each transmission, there is no way to regulate behavior.
Let the people using the phones most develop the protocols. The Olds (anybody over 20) may need to adapt to a new paradigm and watch how the media blossoms from high level use by the people who know best how to use it.
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Big Brother oversight?
That's Google! They are constantly everywhere and keep track of everything. In space, in street views, in every website, everywhere!
I have wondered sometimes if Google is the public face of the Total Information Awareness Program that the Bush Administration brought into being despite Congress forbidding it. Google apparently has access to huge amounts of money to grow their presence in everything and everywhere and that's even while nobody else has been able to actually make substantial money from advertising. And who has vast amounts of money to gather information on everybody besides the US Intelligence acronym agencies?
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I think the art of formal and informal communication is being lost. It is becoming too easy to send a message via text or email, in which much is lost in translation. Tone, inflection, and other subleties are all being lost. We are training a generation to interact vurtually. We need to remind all, nothing beats a real, in person conversation or interaction.
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To the extent that it increases communication between people I can sure support texting.
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I resisted texting and social media for many years. I'm almost 30 now and have finally found how useful these tools can be. In many cases where I wouldn't pick up the phone, I'll send a text. This kind of communication opens the door to increased face to face social encounters and encourages deeper friendships. While I'm not sure this is true for everyone, I have become a supporter of texting and sites like Facebook.
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I was particularly offended that one of your guests via phone, Trent Mitchell, referred to school as the distraction, rather than cell-phones as the distraction. School is a necessity, cell-phones are a luxury. You need an education, you do not 'need' a cell-phone.
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Let's call it what it really is -- an addiction. If a child cannot go for a few hours (they are not in school much longer than that each day) without messing around with their cell-phone, whether it is texting, or updating their Fakebook status, or sexting or whatever they are doing rather than paying attention in class, then they are addicted, plain and simple.
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It seems a bit strong to call it an addiction. Being tied into a network of friends and communicating frequently with them seems to be community-building rather than an addiction. THey are building their networks that for good or bad will be their support group for years. My son's use of cell phones and texting has resulted in great contacts and longtime relationships nationwide. What's wrong with that?
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Well, how about if they talk to one another FACE-to-FACE? (Especially if they are in the same school or neighbourhood.) If they have problems handling life without cell-phones, then they are, indeed, addicted.
Try going without your morning coffee, or your daily donut, or whatever, and see if you don't feel some physical effects (especially with coffee and other caffeine-laced beverages).
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I tend to agree with roboturkey on this one, about community building and support groups being a good thing.
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I agree with community-building and forming relationships, too. But it seems to me, that stronger friendships and other relationships are built in the real world, rather than in the silicon world.
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Mhy experience with texting has been 100% negative, I was crossing the street in front of my house 25mph speed limit, and noticed a car coming from up the street at a very high rate of speed, as it neared Texting has been totally negative for me, I was crossing the street in front of my house (25mph speed limit) when I noticed a car approaching me, my wife and my 2year old baby it swerved to the extreme left of the street heading driectly for my wife, and myself as I dove to the curb I saw a young woman looking down instead of watching the road. I yelled at her and she sat up with eyes wide with panic and swerved at the last minute then accelerated. We were nearly annihilated as a family. The police explaind that she was most probably texting which has become a bigger problem as now the people hide what they are doing below the view of law enforcement. I am against texting.
By the way do you suppose your panel could go a day or week without saying "like, you know or uh"? This would include the "teacher" Trent.
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Can one acquire STDs from texting (silicon transmitted diseases)?
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Yes, and the worst is: AIDS, Acquired Intelligence Deficiency Syndrome…
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Ha ha ha, you guys, I choked on my coffee reading those!
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Breathe, Tom, breathe!
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I think it is good that kids are learning now how to prioritize and organize their working lives.
As an adult I have had to learn how to juggle many distractions. My job requires me dealing with a constant stream of emails, calls on the office and cell phone and dealing with chat request all while completing my other core duties.
Being connected is a fact of life. It is good they are learning to deal with this young in life.
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When I was in high school in rural Iowa, it was customary for my parents to have me take one of the cellphones they had issued from their employer with me when I was out with friends to give them a call when I was going to be late, or if there was any emergency.
In 2006 when I was student teaching, the majority of my students had cellphones. Texting and use during the school day seemed infrequent, and I rarely saw students using their phone while walking in the halls our outside. That school had a rule they were not to be used in the classrooms, and my cooperating teacher would answer a student's phone if it rang in class. My preferred method was to confiscate the phone until either lunch or the end of the day.
Now, as a grad student volunteering at Lincoln High School, I see students texting in classes, or together as a group in the halls or outside but all using phones or other mobile devices.
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I feel that today's youth have poor communication skills, planning skills and are ultimately missing out on life due to their obsessions with texting, social networking, and cell phones.
I have noticed that a definite reduction in attention span, ability to spell and compose coherent messages, and verbal communication skills in todays youth who have grown up with cell phones.
Listening to these kids it's amazing how much they are dependent on their phones and think that they wouldn't be able to get together with friends or plan without the phone to text.
Cell phones and social networking which appear to improve social interaction have seemed to me to create a more disconnected society.
I also find it abhorrent that parents purchase their children cell phones. As a parent I plan to not allow my children to purchase cell phones until they are over 18.
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I feel the same way but then I remembered some strict parents of two beautiful twin girls in my grammar school 8th grade. They were prohibited from talking on the phone with boys and wearing levis.
They both had their first baby in their first year in high school. Sorry I don't have an answer to the problem.
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There is nothing inherently wrong with texting, or even sexting. At times it can be a useful activity for anyone. My objection to it, is that many believe this is a modern, hip, innovative activity in itself, when really it is just another line for the same garbled communications everyone was having before. No one is saying anything new, they are just saying it through a different, neurotic, medium.
The main texting problem is the instant passive aggressive interruption it provides---ding-dong I’ve get something to say to you. But who really has this much to say? And, so often? The whole mess is schizophrenic, other voices, other phones---but is anyone even listening? Who are these folks with so much to say? But, on the positive side, at least these garbage mouths are speaking in silence.
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Given that they are building GPS into so many phones, it would seem to be easy to lock out and prevent the use of a phone that is in motion. But of course that would eliminate use by passengers too so that is not a workable solution.
I don't know what can be done about txtng or talking while driving, but when I have noticed someone behind me who is distracted like that, I have just pulled over and let them pass me by because I don't want to be stopping or anything that would place me in danger from them. And the same with oncoming drivers, I am very aware of them and ready to take evasive action to prevent me being hit.
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GPS-enabled phones are the only good thing I can think of about teens and other children having cell-phones: an electronic leash!
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Good job, all you High School kids!
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Yeah like glad you dug it dude uh ya know like later.
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Memo, that grates on my ears too, but I learned long ago not to be a word and speech snob. I can even remember while growing up, trying to learn the "cool" words and speech and what they meant.
And in high school I moved from the very cliquish and snobbish college town Corvallis to the then logging town of Bend, and I learned to downgrade my talk to fit in with those children of loggers and millworkers and not be rejected as a snob.
So I say let it go, they mean well, even if they don't always speak well.
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How about that? OPB gave a bunch of kids an excuse to be out of class and away from their sole reason for being at school: getting an education!
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I suggest that they got quite an education about what a talk show is all about from the inside.
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I was horrified when I heard that Measure 73 could end up sending teenagers to jail for sexting and other, while undesirable, immature behaviors like texting photos back and forth! I felt like I spend a reasonable amount of time reading over the measure before voting on it, and I never read that this could be a side effect of it passing! I would not have voted for it if I had known.
Your discussion of the way various laws come together to create such a potential situation and how one 19 year old girl is facing charges because of such laws hit too close to home for me, and I'd love to see you do a future show on how teenagers are getting swept up in tougher sex offender laws. I am 110%+ for stronger sex offender laws when it truly applies to a real pedophile, but I feel like teenagers lives are being unfairly ruined due to the lack of common sense in applying the law when it comes to teenagers dating (again, dating - a consensual relationship; I'm all for proper charges if a teenager does something obviously violent and wrong, such as rape).
I'm not familiar with Oregon law, but if it's anything like Idaho law, we have a serious flaw in these laws and how it effects teenagers and I think it needs to be brought to everyones attention.
My too close to home story is that one of my nephews living in Idaho turned 18 years old while he was in his senior year of high school. I don't think it really clicks or makes sense to these kids (frankly to me either) why one day it's okay for them to date a classmate and then after your 18 year birthday, you're considered a criminal by continuing to date or have consensual interaction with a classmate under 18 years of age. In my nephews case, he simply made out with a classmate who confirms it was consensual, but because of a serious of events that's too long to go into here, he's now facing a felony charge that could require him to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life! My nephew is a great kid that is known and loved by all his classmates, teachers; who was suppose to ship out to basic training 3 months after this happened (but now instead has a dishonorable discharge in addition to the pending felony charge)... the girl isn't pressing charges, the girls parents aren't pressing charges - they've in fact signed an affidavit that they don't feel he's done anything inappropriate and don't wish to see him charged... but the police and local prosecutors are determined to apply sex offender laws to this case and ruin his life!!! It's just wrong!!!!
If Oregon laws are anything similar, this should be examined and brought to the publics attention; especially to our teens attention so they truly understand the legal, life-ruining risk of what used to be normal, acceptable interactions among teenagers.
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Comments are now closed.
I wonder if psychologists would consider texting to be a form of "dissociation", of a person not being fully present and emotionally engaged with their friends. It seems like an odd thing. You miss so many facial expressions that provide so much communication of what is really going on in the relationship.
An example would be texting that you are "doing great" even while you are sobbing with tears.
And "sexting"? Is that about actual sex or just being naked in front of friends like we old hippies always used to do as an expression of freedom?