13 y/o DD sent 7700 text messages so far this month...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You lose so much nuance over the phone instead of face to face, and so much more texting instead of over the phone.

My DD loses her phone for 3 days any time I find out she's texted during school hours, plus every night during dinner she's not allowed to have her phone at the table, PLUS has to turn it in at 9pm and doesn't get it back until she's ready for school the following day. On days she has no school, she can have it back at 9am (only earlier if she's leaving the house earlier). I want her to pick up non-verbal cues, facial expressions, body language, etc. LOOK AT PEOPLE WHEN YOU SPEAK WITH THEM.

poor kid

[Anonymous]

OP, do you see any ill affects from this massive amount of texting? Is she pulling good grades? Getting enough exercise? Enough sleep? Does she spend her time staring at her phone or ignoring those around her so she can text (esp at meals - I really hate that)?

If so, you could consider limiting her texting. I would.

Parent of teens

[Anonymous]

I was at a dinner party a couple of weeks ago. The adults had a lovely time chatting, while the three teens were buried in their phones the entire night -- texting while serving themselves, texting while eating, texting in separate corners while everyone else talked.

Would you recognize your kids without that blue glow reflecting off their faces?

[Anonymous]

I don't know if this is sad or isn't sad. I don't have opinions about how many texts other peoples' kids send.
But I do know that it's possible for kids to live full and rich lives without sending thousands of texts. My DD is quite happy (I mean, for an adolescent), has good friends, and is socially well-adjusted. She has a text plan that limits her to 250 per mo, after which I make her pay per text. Because she can't otherwise control what texts come in, she asked me to pay the $5 per mo. to block after the 250 is reached. Actually, she only has 230 because we set aside 20 for texts between her and us.

Whatever works for you.

[Anonymous]

We have teens. No texting. Their phones CAN'T text. They lead surprisingly normal lives, have lots of friends and are well adjusted. We also don't have crazy phone bills. They don't HAVE to text to be popular, you know.

[Anonymous]

Lots of the old people coming out on DCUM tonight, eh?

[Anonymous]

Is that incoming and outgoing? My phone service lists them together, per line.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lots of the old people coming out on DCUM tonight, eh?

Seriously. I mean why would parents of teenagers be responding at all? Don't they have bridge club or something? They don't need to know about texting. Sheesh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your kid is staring at a phone every waking moment -- including, no doubt, meals and classtime -- and the depth of their relationships can be measured in five characters or less.

That. Is. Sad.

Actually, no. You seriously overestimate the amount of time it takes for a teen to rack up thousands of texts.

[Anonymous]

What is so wrong with texting? Its better to talk on the phone for a couple of hours a night? Watch TV? Most of these texts are essentially "OMG" send. One word, two. Maybe sometimes more. This will hardly destroy their lives.

I agree that a lot of out of touch people are coming onto this thread. Sorry, one day your children will text. Unless they've moved on to the next thing. You probably already know that they don't email anymore, don't you?

[Anonymous]

1) Are you sure that she sent all of the texts and that this is not combo of texts going in and out?

2) Do her emails count as texts?

3) Does she update facebook/twitter through text? When she updates her status, is it counted as a text?

4) Is she sending group messages, like to a group of friends at school? If so, each person on the distro list could count as a separate text depending on the plan.

If you want to see what is going on, sign up for google voice and sync google voice with an account you can access. You will be able to see all incoming/outgoing texts except picture texts without taking her phone.

[Anonymous]

That sounds pretty normal to me.

~Mom of five. Three in college. One in high school. One in middle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Assuming 5 seconds a text. That's 38,500 seconds or 641.66 minutes, or 10.69 hours straight that she spent sending texts. Let's assume she spent about the same amount of time reading texts... is that the best use of 21 hours of your DD's time over the last 16/17 days?

So, about an hour a day?

Considering how much time I spent talking on the phone when I was a teen, that sounds pretty good! (My parents had to install a second line. And I'm not in any way damaged.)

Also, 5 seconds a text would be a LOT. Doesn't take me 5 seconds to text "great, be there in a few", much less "ok". Which is the majority of my texts. Anyway, it's not just teens... it seems like every time I set up a dinner out with a friend, it's 8-10 texts minimum. "See you at 6?" "yep. can't wait!" "what's the address?" "14th and P" "Bus is slow... be right there!" "Great!" and so on. That whole exchange would take place inside of a minute.

As above-- about an hour a day spread out over a day. OP- for comparison could you say how many phone minutes she's used in a typical month?

[Anonymous]

The only thing to look out for is spelling and word usage. Believe me, I am no grammar Nazi, but a lot of kids write the way they text. When some kids have to write an essay for school (or standardized tests), the grammar, punctuation and spelling is horrible. Anyway...just me two cents. Carry on.

[Anonymous]

OP here.

First, I'm not upset at the number of texts. I just couldn't grasp being able to send that many in such a short amount of time. DH and I only have about 150 so far! Like many pp have stated, lots of these texts are one word texts, but yeah, still pretty shocked (I LOL'd when I saw it).

No cellphones at the dinner table and/or any family time. This is usually her after-school hobby after homework. She is addicted to the phone and I'm okay with her using it as long as her home stuff is done.

re: phone. She's used 200 minutes on her cellphone plan in the same amount of time. BUT, she's on the home phone off and on until her cutoff time. But, she's usually texting one friend while talking to another!!

I've told her no phone at school, so this amount of messages will have me making sure she is not texting during the school day.