Teens: over-texting and over-networking!

Nowadays it’s very difficult to imagine a teenager without a cell phone and a laptop. Now researchers have found that poor health habits such as drinking and smoking are mostly caused by excessive text messaging and online networking. A study by the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine has given evidence that excessive texting and online networking have increased the unsuspected health risks for teenagers. Before this when United States surveyed students from public high schools in the state of Ohio highlighting their use of communication technologies and lifestyle.

They found that teens who send more than 120 texts in a day or spend 3 hours on social networking sites such as facebook in a day are on an increased risk of getting involoved in unhealthy behaviors; such as 40% are more likely to have tried cigarettes, 43% are more likely to be binge drinkers, 41% are more likely to have used illegal drugs and 55% are more likely to been engaged in a physical fight. They also reported that hyper-networking is associated with more stress, depression, sleep deprivation and poor academic performance.

Scott Frank, a leading researcher of the study said. “The startling results of this study suggest that when left unchecked, texting and other widely popular methods of staying connected can have dangerous health effects on teenagers”. Hence I believe that this should be a wake up call for the parents to help their children to stay safe by discouraging excessive use of the cell phone and social websites too because in my opinion it is the same thing as letting our children go out and socialize for long hours on a school night. If we are stopping our children from spending long hours outside then we should not let them use the cell phone in such an excess or social networking sites because both the situations have the same effect in the long run.