text messaging

L.G. did a mobile phone survey and found some interesting results about parents and teens:

Activities

28 percent of parents admit to engaging in some form of “sexting” and 43 percent of teens admit to doing the same.
Almost half of all parents and teens surveyed admit to texting and driving.
42 percent of parents admit to texting someone while at the dinner table; whereas 69 percent of teens admit to texting at the dinner table.
38 percent of parents admit to texting during the middle of the night; whereas, 83 percent of teens admit to texting during those hours.

Awareness

45 percent of teens admit to texting and driving. And only 4 percent of parents believe their teens ever text while driving.
43 percent of teens admit to putting someone down or insulting them in a text, while only 10 percent of parents believe their teens had ever participated in this type of hurtful behavior.
41 percent of teens admit to sending, receiving, or forwarding a text that said something sexual, while only 11 percent of parents thought their teens had ever sexted.
52 percent of teens admit to checking someone else’s texts or having had their texts checked by someone without permission, while only 8 percent of parents thought their teens had ever participated in this behavior.

Interestingly “41 percent of teens admit to sending, receiving, or forwarding a text that said something sexual” but 43 percent “engaging in some form of ‘sexting'”. I would think sending, receiving or forwarding would result in a much higher percentage. I can’t find any information about the methodology of the survey to help clarify this discrepancy.

Back in my day you had to draw yourself on a piece of paper and walk it over. When it resulted in laughing we called the return trip “the walk of shame”.

Good luck sleeping tonight parents. Kids.

eMarketer on research from Oxygen Media Insights Group:

More than a third of female social media users ages 18 to 34 had fallen asleep with their PDA in their hands or reported regularly checking Facebook first thing in the morning.

I get that females especially that age group are the more social demographic, we’ve seen that demonstrated countless times… but this can’t be healthy. “more than a third” is actually 37% almost 2 in 5. I’d bet if you go skew the demographic younger, 15-23 for example you’d get an even higher percentage.

That might be why Telco’s can charge so much for text messaging despite it having an extremely low actual cost to provide the service (translation: it’s almost pure profit). Addicts will pay.