Trouble for Texting Teens?: Constant Text-Messaging Concerns Doctors

Teens' text-messaging is on the rise, raising concerns ranging from anxiety and sleep deprivation to repetitive stress injury.

By KATIE HAFNER
The New York Times

They do it late at night when their parents are asleep. They do it in restaurants and while crossing busy streets. They do it in the classroom with their hands behind their back. They do it so much their thumbs hurt.

Spurred by unlimited texting plans offered by carriers such as AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless, U.S. teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages a month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Nielsen Co., almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier.

The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation.

Dr. Martin Joffe, a pediatrician in Greenbrae, Calif., recently surveyed students at two high schools and said he found many were routinely sending hundreds of texts every day.

"That's one every few minutes," he said. "Then you hear that these kids are responding to texts late at night. That's going to cause sleep issues in an age group that's already plagued with sleep issues."

[Read More Nation & World | Trouble for texting teens?: Constant text-messaging concerns doctors | Seattle Times Newspaper]