The number of text messages the average teen sends today is staggering. The last statistic I saw was that teen girls send over 3300 text messages a month, an average of more than 100 texts /day. Of course most of this happens at bus stops and after school, between activities, and distills down to messages about homework, rides, and boys. For kids who are “hypertexters” (over 120 messages/day) there is some research correlating the behavior to high risk taking, too... but I’m not convinced.
In fact, I’m trying to figure out my reaction to all the finger action and what seems to be the irresistible urge of the teen girls I know to text each other in the same room or when piled in the same car. Social scientists and journalists lament whether this is the end of authentic interpersonal interactions, the learning of social skills needed to be contributing adults in the world, ethical behavior, and so on.
But I have to say I have come to see the texting as one way I know my 13-year-old daughter still cares. If all I get is something like this:
“Can u pick me up@ graces? <kisses>”
…. I’ll take it.
I mean, when do you get a real hug or kiss at this stage anyway?
It strikes me that texting serves a new way for teens to hint to their parents they are appreciated, the kind of gesture that will no longer be acknowledged in a sideways hug, high five, or God forbid, a verbal “thanks” or “love ya” face to face. It’s sort of like when around the age of 8, you can no longer kiss your kid on the forehead before she hops on the bus for her fear of being ruthlessly tagged as being a baby.
So while my not-so-little girl has entered the beginning of what Erik Erikson dubbed the “Identity vs. Role Confusion” - that betwixt and between developmental stage from child to adulthood, it seems that technology may ameliorate the experience of rejection, dismissal and withdrawal. I suppose it can go the other way, too.
For now texting is like a tether, however flimsy or flighty, of sweet somethings that I can hold on to.
(\ /)
( . .)♥
c(”)(”)
I am also in some confusion about all this texting and my role as Mom in this activity. I love the humor in the texts that go back and forth between us, but am very concerned about the three conversations at once going on during a live conversation we are having. I have this kind of tongue in cheek phrase coming from experts called "our family values." It's kind of tongue in cheek because at the moment our family is she and I. Still, I say something like: "It is not within our family values to be having four conversations at once. We value giving a person we are communicating with our full attention." She smirks and we might have a conversation about how it doesn't feel like a family when there are just two of us. And the message is still out there. The thing about parenting teens is that I have had to let go of the idea of physically and immediately making something stop that I don't like. The best power I seem to have is planting ideas. Does this work for anyone else out there in cyperland? *<{:^)
Posted by: Sophia Shurely | January 13, 2011 at 03:05 PM