Texting:

A 21st Century Take On Communication

By Nancy K. Crevier

If the idea that your child is sending 3,000 text messages a month makes your hair stand on end, step back, take a deep breath, and relax. Even if each text took a minute — and most are just seconds long — that is 50 hours a month, or just over an hour and a half each day. Compared to the amount of time the average teenager spent on the telephone a generation ago, it is not so bad at all.

“It’s such a social thing,” said parent Tammy DeMarche. She and her husband Burt have three children, ages 16, 12, and 9. The two older children have cellphones with texting capability, although they are on different plans. The 12-year-old has a 200 text per month plan, while the 16-year-old is on an unlimited plan.

“For kids, it’s a way of communication,” said Ms DeMarche. “They don’t even touch the phone anymore and it’s nice for them to be able to talk to their friends, even if it’s just a quick message,” she said.

The couple has occasionally revoked cellphone privileges when texting gets out of hand, said Ms DeMarche.

“We have rules about not texting at the table or when talking to someone else, but our oldest child always has her phone with her,” she said. The interesting thing the DeMarches have noticed when phone privileges are taken away is a sense of relief in the child.

“It’s almost like being instantly available all of the time puts some kind of pressure on kids. We find that without the cellphones, the kids are more engaged with the family, more calm and relaxed,” said Ms DeMarche. This recent discovery may lead to some new rules concerning the availability of the cell hones, she said, but is something the family will discuss.

What Dr Leesa Sklover-Filgate worries about is that texting is a way of not being genuine.

“There are different levels of intimacy in the world today,” said Dr Sklover-Filgate, who practices counseling and psychotherapy in New Preston, New York City, and has hours at Santosha Yoga Center in Hawleyville.

“Texting takes away from reality. In face-to-face or phone conversations, we hear real, full sentences, and we hear the voice. There is a lot of room for misinterpretation in a text,” said Dr Sklover-Filgate.

There is a place in this culture for texting, she said, but it should not take the place of conversation. “It is great for quick messages. It should be saved for emergencies or changes to plans. We have to monitor how much time we spend texting.”

Local family therapist Bart Schofield is also concerned about the amount of sensory overload that young people in today’s society are experiencing. “Kids are looking at three to four text messages consecutively. It’s the aftermath of multitasking,” said Mr Schofield, and the problem with trying to juggle several processes at once, he said, is that it does not imbue in children the reality that to accomplish anything in life, it is often necessary to focus on just one thing at a time. “When young people today are called upon [to focus on one thing at a time] they get bored very quickly. They don’t learn the ability to focus singly,” Mr Schofield said.

The other appeal to text messaging, Mr Schofield added, is that young people find it to be something that they can do in “secret” from adults. “It is just theirs, and that is something they find attractive,” he said.

Newtown High School sophomore Maggie Korth is not bothered by being “on call” with texting at all times.  “I think that kids like the availability it gives them,” said Maggie. “It’s an easy and simple way to get in touch with your friends. I think it’s easier than talking on the phone because you can do other things at the same time. Plus, I just think it’s more casual. You can answer whenever you want, or not at all,” she said. And for all the complaining adults may do about texting and electronic communication between young people, she believes that adults also appreciate the ease with which they can keep up with their families, thanks to texting.

“I think that some people are bored, so they text you,” said Newtown High School sophomore Dan Snyder. “I don’t like to use it for extended conversations, just for quick messages, like if I want to let my parents know what time to pick me up from somewhere and stuff like that,” said Dan. He feels it is harder to convey the right expressions into what he wants to say through texting. “It can be misinterpreted, too, on text. People can’t tell if you are just joking about something you say. I guess I don’t like to leave it to my friends to guess what I mean,” he said.

Teens do like to use text as a method to contact someone they do not know really well, said Dan. “You can text someone about homework or some little thing if you think you want to get to know them better,” he said. “It’s less awkward.”

But it is the convenience that makes texting popular with young people, said Dan, most of whom usually send far more texts than the 100 or so he estimates he sends in a month.

“I have unlimited texting that I pay for myself, but I still don’t text a lot,” he said, adding that he would not want to find himself in the situation of an acquaintance who racked up a bill of more than $1,000 one month by exceeding his text limit. That is the kind of situation that irks adults, said Dan, along with texting during a meal or in the classroom.

Chris Devellis, her husband Joe, a guidance counselor at Norwalk Middle School, and the two oldest of their four boys have an unlimited texting plan for their cellphones. Between them, they probably send and receive more than 5,000 texts each month, Ms Devellis said, although many are simply one letter or one-word responses.

“The boys find texting so much more of a convenience than calling, and if they can’t get in a phone call during the day, they can text to let me know about a change of plans or whatever. Our oldest is in college and he sends maybe 3,000 texts a month, but the novelty of a cellphone and texting wears off at that age. It’s just a way to communicate and especially in college, texting can offer privacy for conversations,” Ms Devellis said.

She also finds texting a convenient way to send quick messages to her friends. “If I am meeting four people to take a walk, it is so much easier [than phoning] to just click off the message ‘walk?’” she said.

The Devellis family views texting as another tool of communication, but they do insist on certain rules of etiquette. “If we are at the dinner table, or out to dinner, or visiting with others, the rule is to put away the cellphone,” she said, “and of course, the whole driving piece.” She and her husband hope that they have ingrained in the boys the horrible circumstances that can occur when attention is removed from the road for one second to answer or send a text. “We remind them that not texting while driving is as important as putting on that seatbelt,” she said.

Laura and Tim Helmig go one step further with their 13-year-old’s cellphone and texting privileges, even though they do not see evidence that it is problematic in their household.

The cellphone is not allowed at the dinner table, and the phone is not allowed in the bedroom at night.

“We don’t tend to get on her much,” said Ms Helmig. “When we say, ‘That’s enough,’ she turns it off. She’s successful, and she’s involved in a lot of activities. It bothers me when I feel she is focused on the texting, because I don’t think it builds good social skills. But she was never really big on using the phone, so I think that texting is a more comfortable means of communication for her and her friends.”

Ms Helmig uses texting to communicate with her daughter regularly, knowing that her daughter will respond right away.

“It’s hard to be critical [about the amount of texting]. When I was her age, I spent so much time on the phone. It’s a different way of communicating from previous generations. I guess that texting is really a more positive than negative thing for us. It keeps our family connected when we are busy or schedules conflict,” she said.

Concern Over A Related Phenomenon

Although not a problem with any of the families interviewed by The Bee, parents did express concern about the texting phenomenon known as “sexting,” or the sending of explicit photos between teenagers.

Sexting is not necessarily illegal, said Lt Paul Vance of the Connecticut State Police of the relatively new concern. “We have to look at the whole situation and go by circumstances,” he said. It is not illegal by Connecticut pornography standards, for instance, for two 15-year-olds to send and receive suggestive or nude photos of each other, but police need to ask if it poses a risk of injury to a minor, or if it could be considered obscenity, which may carry charges.

Many of the calls that his office receives are from horrified parents who discover or somehow end up on the “send” list of photos that their children have “sexted” to someone else.

“There is a lot of surprise by parents who can’t believe that little Suzie or Billy is sending these kinds of photos of themselves,” said Lt Vance, who feels this is an issue that he believes must be dealt with at the parental level.

His greatest concern about these kinds of photos being sent via cellphones, said Lt Vance, is predators at large who look for the opportunity to identify and stalk children in these photos.

“There are people who surf the Internet looking for this kind of thing and trying to find the subjects of the photos. These photos don’t disappear into thin air if texted to friends. You don’t know whose hands they end up in,” he said. Sexted photographs could follow a person his or her whole life, even resurfacing at a much later date — like when applying for a job after college, Lt Vance said.

“Texting has become an issue within the school and is used frequently between students as a way to communicate with each other, positively and negatively,” said Newtown Middle School Resource Officer Leonard Penna. Cyberbullying has become the most common form of students bullying each other, said the officer, but at this point, sexting by the middle school population has not been an issue.

“There are no specific laws in Connecticut which pertain to texting or sexting,” said Officer Penna. “However, during the course of texting or sexting, some laws can be violated.”

As Lt Vance suggested, Officer Penna said that risk of injury to a minor or impairing the morals of children, and harrassment by electronically transmitting a facsimile in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm, are just two laws that may be applied to anyone abusing texting.

If photos are passed around and end up in front of the eyes of people they were not intended for, the incriminating photos can certainly become a source for bullying, said Lt Vance.

“Kids have to be prepared for that if they are going to get into sexting. Think before you do anything on a cellphone or with texting,” advised the trooper.

Lt Vance suggested that if a teenager receives an unsolicited, explicit photo from an acquaintance, that they share that information with parents or school authorities for guidance. “Discuss it with a trusted adult,” he recommended.

“We continue to tell our kids that things they might consider a ‘joke,’ you never know what hands it is going into,” Ms Devellis said. The Devellises have told their sons that if they receive inappropriate photos, it is important to not be part of that chain.

“I’m very upfront with my daughter, and she said that she was aware of sexting, but not around here,” said Ms Helmig of a “big” discussion she had with her daughter on the subject recently. “She understands that I am there for her to protect here, to be there for her. I’m not going to turn my head, even if talking about these things pushes her away to a point,” Ms Helmig said.

“You cannot assume kids know about these things, and kids need to know what the consequences are.”