Study: High-texting teens likely to have sex, smoke, drink

Teens who text more than 120 times a day are more likely to have had sex, smoked cigarettes or used alcohol or drugs than those who don't send as many texts, according to a study released Tuesday.

The study's author isn't saying "hyper-texting" - defined as more than 120 messages per school day - directly leads to sex, drinking or drugs, but says it "is related to higher levels of health risk behaviors."

A significant number of hyper-texting teens also have absent parents, according to Dr. Scott Frank, lead researcher on the study and director of the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine Master of Public Health program in Cleveland. Frank said the study should be a "wake-up call" for parents.

Middle Country schools Superintendent Roberta A. Gerold called the study "a very scary piece of research" and said she will notify the PTA Council and her high school principals about the findings.

"Our role and a parent's role is to try to help kids figure it out, to monitor and manage their involvement and teach them how to make decisions," she said.

Frank presented the study Tuesday at the American Public Health Association meetings in Denver. The study was based on confidential surveys of more than 4,200 students in Midwestern high schools.

Dr. Victor Fornari, director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, part of the North Shore-LIJ Health System, said texting should not be prohibited, but parents should communicate with children about it.

"I don't want to somehow suggest that texting per se is a problem," he said. "The way people communicate is different with texting and e-mail. They say things that they wouldn't say face-to-face and that contributes to saying things that may be a little bit more out there."

Deer Park parent Katherine George said she monitors her 17-year-old daughter's computer and cell phone use. Her daughter, Joanna George, a student at Half Hollow Hills High School East, said she texts to her friends "all the time," but does not see a link between at-risk behavior and texting.

"If you are a strong-minded person, that won't happen and you won't follow what other people do," she said.

Lachona Velez, 19, a SUNY-Old Westbury sophomore from Patchogue, said she started texting at 15 and averages about 150 texts per day.

"It's more a way of communication," she said, adding teens by nature of their age are more prone to engage in risky behaviors whether they text or not.

Genevieve Weber, an assistant professor of counselor education at Hofstra University, who has worked as a mental health counselor, found "when somebody pushes boundaries in one area, they are more likely to push boundaries in other areas," such as extreme texting.

Technology, she said, is "changing the wiring of the next generation's brain and we will see other long-term changes."