Just about everyone has a cell phone in this day and age and just about all of those people use text messaging. Most of those people are teenagers. I live with three teenagers myself, so i constantly hear the little clicking of buttons, and don’t get me wrong, I text just as much too.
But there’s this little issue with teens and texting (and this may be for adults as well, not just teens). Teens are being injured while texting in a variety of ways.
Let’s take for instance the popular “Walk-with-your-face-in-your-phone” syndrome that seems to be plaguing teens across the globe. Just the other day at work, I watched a teenage girl walk right into some guys cart. She, of course, was texting while walking. She almost knocked the whole cart over!
And let’s not forget the time a teenager in New York fell down into a manhole while texting and walking. In fact, CNN did an investigation into the incident and interviewed people about texting and walking.
You can watch the video of that story here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX0mAJjxF2I
Also, that girl had to be rescued and taken to the emergency room.
Something else that’s sad about this is schools are now having safety announcements and exercises about walking safely. Shouldn’t this not be something that kids between the ages of 15 and 18 don’t need? Shouldn’t they know to watch where they’re walking when they’re like five years old? You’d think so, but according to a study, the number of pedestrian deaths and injuries has risen amongst teens and the culprit is not watching where they’re walking while texting. You can find the study information here.
Something else that is frequently in the news is the ever popular texting while driving. I’m not sure which one is more dangerous, walking or driving while texting. We’ve all seen those ads on tv where someone is talking about the last message their relative sent before crashing their car. Do those messages even reach the ears of teens? I doubt it. I’ve seen quite a few girls at my school texting while driving out of the campus parking lot. I wasn’t aware that people had two sets of eyes, one for the road and one for the phone. I won’t even text at a red light.
The fact that teenagers think they are immortal is another factor to the whole “let’s text while possibly putting others in danger” thing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard kids say “that can’t happen to me,” “that happens to other people.” Or my favorite, “I’m special so I won’t die.” You are not special. You are made up of DNA and molecules just like everyone else. Shut up.
It may sound like I’m being harsh, but I’m trying to be truthful. There’s young kids with their whole lives ahead of them that are getting hurt and dying because of something so stupid as sending a text message. This is almost to an epidemic level. Check out these stats I found about texting while driving. They’re haunting. http://www.edgarsnyder.com/car-accident/cell-phone/cell-phone-statistics.html
And there’s a terribly easy solution for all this: PUT DOWN THE DAMN PHONE.