This Year: Resolve to Text Your Teen More

As it stands, the teens in our household do not have texting on their phones. Our high schoolers get it from two angles. As a researcher of adolescent social media use, I don't necessarily want them growing up experiencing the cellphone as an extension of their friendship cluster. As an accountant, my wife sees no financial reason to do it.

brad howell

Poor kids - if they ever want to do anything, they pretty much have to pay for it themselves.

However - within boundaries - I do not believe teen texting is bad!

I actually think its a positive trend and a great way for teens to interact with each other when they are not physically present.

It certainly is less disruptive to the family than the days when teens would tie up a land line for hours on end.

Teens need the support that their friendships provide. Texting can be a healthy supplement to that. It works for parents too!

Almost every parent who texts their teens feels closer to them. The majority of teens who text with their parents in turn also feel closer to them.

Teens and parents feeling closer to each other? Sounds like a positive outcome for a counter-intuitive New Year's Resolution...

Want to Feel Closer To Your Teen? Text Them

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One supporting area teens need to successfully transition from childhood to adulthood is a sense of closeness to emotionally encouraging adults - like parents for example. Feelings of closeness is about the strengths of bonds between parents and kids. Like all needs, closeness is rated from the perspective of the child, not the parent. To that end, research indicates that almost 2/3 of teens feel closer to their parents when they exchange text messages with them. That in itself is a pretty good reason to start adding text messages to your relational connection repertoire. For parents however, the number who feel closer to their teens when texting them jumps to 90%. That means almost every parent can feel closer to their teen by exchanging texts. Though no technological tool can replace a quality offline relationship, positive affirmation is always a good thing, and good things tend to replicate themselves.

So send a text to your kids today...just wait until they get out of school to do it - their teachers will thank you.

Hyper-Texting As A Barometer Of Teenage Pain

The American Public Health Association defines hyper-texting as sending more than 120 texts on a typical school day and characterizes these individuals as being primarily lower social-economic, minority females with no father residing at home. The APHA study reports that one in five high school students fall into this category and the risk factors for this group include:

• 40% more likely to have tried cigarettes
• 2x more likely to have tried alcohol
• 43% more likely to be binge drinkers
• 41% more likely to have used illicit drugs
• 55% more likely to have been in a physical fight
• nearly 3.5x more likely to have had sex



INDUSTRIAL BAROMETER
© Christian Draghici | Dreamstime.com




• 90% more likely to have had 4 or more sexual partners

The study then identifies hyper-texting as a new health risk factor.

Clearly there is a positive correlation between hyper-texting and risky behaviors. However, it seems premature to implicate texting as the culprit and not a symptom. Could it be that hyper-texting is more of a barometer of the ongoing abandonment of our youth?  In this case, a key piece of information seems to be overlooked, namely the lack of fathers in the home. 

To me, texting is a way that teens can bring their friendship cluster along with them despite the limitations of space and time. A cluster is a group of friends protecting each other's back and they exist to help teenagers survive in our culture. Cell phones provide ongoing and immediate connection to this cluster, a phenomon I have labeled Floating Entourage. Have you ever asked a teen to turn their phone off and they protest because their friends might need them? That is an example of a Floating Entourage and disconnecting them from that is a threat to their support structure. Hyper-texters are a great example of this.

What these teens are lacking is paternal (father) experiences in their life. Characteristics of this type of support will include trust, communication and closeness as perceived by the teen. No one can replace a father in the home, but everyone can begin developing webs of relationships with these at risk students, slowly becoming a part of their Floating Entourage of support. As you interact with teens, keep alert of those who may be hyper-texters, they especially need adults in their life willing to have no other agenda but to be there for the student.

To read the study directly, click here
APHA

Keep loving on the students in your life,
Brad

Why Teens Exchanging 60 Texts A Day Feels Low

Lead researcher Amanda Lenhart and the Pew Internet team released new statistics March 19 on teenage texting rates, putting the median texts sent and received by teenagers at 60. The number has caused some people who work with youth to question that. If you are one of those people and are thinking a typical high school student could not possibly be exchanging only 60 texts a day, well you would be right...sort of.

© Francisco Hernández Vega | Dreamstime.com

For those of us who took a mandatory stats class a long time ago, perhaps in what seems like a galaxy far, far away, it is good to be reminded that median does not equal average. Median means the mid-point user of the sample group, and the researchers take the time to try and explain this. In this case, half of the surveyed teens exchanged less than 60 texts, the other half exchanged more. The data group creates a statistical skew however as the surveyed teens include 12 year old boys and 17 year old girls, developmentally two very different beasts.

Only in the last few years have researchers been making an appeal to avoid treating adolescents as one monolithic culture when it comes to Internet use. The Pew Internet research is one of the few that provide us with a snapshot of how early and mid adolescents differ in their texting use. In this regard the difference between the two groups is quite striking, and so is the difference between boys and girls.

The research suggests that half of younger teen boys exchange less than 20 texts per day (the other half would therefore send more). In contrast, half of the 14-17 year old girls exchange less than 100 texts per day (the other would be above that number). For boys in the older age group, the half is split at 50 texts per day - which is half the amount of girls in their own age group, yet more than the younger girls who are split at 35 daily exchanged texts. This fits our often preconceived notion that girls are sending a lot of texts to each other, and in fact they are.

The actual average number of texts exchanged daily between girls aged 14-17 is 187. For boys of the same age group it is 176. For 12-13 year old girls the average is 116, while in a surprise stereotype reversal, for boys in that age group the average lands at 131. Why are the averages so much higher than the median? Because hyper-texters are skewing the results upward.

The American Public Health Association defines hyper-texters as those who send more than 120 texts per day. The APHA study places hyper-texters at 19.5% of high school students and suggests that group is mostly female. In Lenhart's study, once a 12-17 year old breaks the 100  exchanged texts barrier, the majority are exchanging over 200 per day. The number above 200 is 18%, and considering most texts are an exchange, half of that would place the student sending more than 100 texts per day, a number consistent with the APHA's research.

Texting is an ongoing activity and teens can often text without being noticed. However, if we were to allow 7 hours of sleep per night, 6 hours of class time and 2 hours of homework per day, hyper-texting high school students would have to exchange a text every 2 minutes, 15 seconds. With 1 in 5 students texting every other minute, it is little wonder that 60 texts a day feels low.

To look at these numbers more closely, follow these links:
Pew Interent Research Study
APHA

Let me know what you think, does 60 texts per day seem low to you?

What is the Floating Entourage Project?

The Floating Entourage Project is an effort to equip adults to utilize social media as an aspect of developing healthy adult-adolescent webs of relationships. This serves as a part of my final project for the Doctor of Ministry degree at Fuller Theological Seminary. As part of that effort, I am seeking Sacramento area churches that would be willing to host a seminar for parents and those who serve youth who are concerned about teen social media use. The seminar could be done in a single, 2 hour evening event or over two Sunday morning sessions. For the beta groups, there would be a pre and post survey as well as opportunities to share experiences in an online community. Please let me know if you are interested in participating.

For those seeking more ideas to connect with youth online please feel free to check back here often and participate in the discussions around how young people are using various social media tools. It is my hope that these blog postings serve to point you in the right direction and that your participation will help me understand how others view teen use of social media.

If you are interested, would you please take a few moments to fill out a survey before exploring this blog, and again after using it for at least a 4 week period of time? Thanks for you help, you can access the surveys here:

Pre-blog Survey

Thank-you for joining with me in this very important project,

Brad
March 20, 2012