15 Surprising, Scholarly Facts About Text Messaging

GUEST POST BY  Larry Dignan

You probably already have a few pretty good ideas about text messaging. For instance, you know walking while texting can be tricky, and you know texting in your college courses has a negative impact on your grades. You didn't need a study to tell you so, but researchers went ahead and did them anyway. But not all the research done on the subject can be filed under "Obvious." Here are 15 scholarly facts about texting that you may not

have suspected.

1. Getting a text makes you happier:

   
   It shouldn't be too much of a surprise to learn that receiving a text message from a close friend makes you happier, but now we have the research to confirm it. Berkeley psychologists found even sending a text message makes people feel more connected and causes an upswing in mood.

2. Hypertexters are less healthy:

   Texting may make you happier, but those who do it too much seem prone to unhealthy habits. Case Western Reserve School of Medicine concluded a study in 2010 that found "hypertexting" — sending more than 120 messages a day — can "have dangerous health effects on teenagers." Hypertexters were found to be more likely to engage in harmful behaviors like binge drinking (43% more likely) and drug use (41% more likely).

3. Texting behind the wheel is even riskier than we thought:

   Few things are as distracting to a motorist as trying to read or send a text message. Researchers at Texas A&M University's Texas Transportation Institute now say, based on their study, that texting while driving double's a driver's reaction time. In the test, drivers using their phones were 11 times more likely to miss a flashing traffic light than focused drivers.

4. Texting while driving killed 16,000 in a six-year period:

   Exactly measuring the number of traffic deaths caused by texting is impossible, but researchers from the University of North Texas Health Science Center have put the number at 16,000 between 2001 and 2007. Their findings were compiled based on information from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and were published in the American Journal of Public Health. They estimated that in 2008 alone, 5,870 people died as a result of drivers distracted by texting.

5. Texters use fewer abbreviations than we thought:

   
   Three universities are currently partnering to determine whether it's true that cell phone communication is really ruining the way we write. The study began in December 2011, and head researcher Christian Guilbault of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia says the research has already revealed some interesting info. It turns out people don't resort to shorthand as often as we might think. "See you" is used four times as often as "C U," and of 12 variations of the word "OK," "okay" is the most common.

6. Black people send the most text messages:

   The Nielsen Company looked at monthly cell phone bills of 60,000 users in the U.S. and determined that African-Americans send more texts than Hispanics, whites, and Asian-Americans. The 790 text messages they send per month, on average, is more than twice the amount sent by Asian-Americans, who send an average of 384 per month.

7. Texting helps HIV sufferers take their meds:

   A study that recently appeared in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews found that sending HIV patients weekly text messages to remind them to take medicine and to ask them how they are doing can help them stick to their antiretroviral therapy treatment plans. Researchers at UC-San Francisco's Global Health Sciences recommend hospitals text patients on the treatment, which has tough side effects, but is also critical to survival.

8. Texters don't believe that's a word:

   Blame it on autocorrect. A University of Calgary student did a study of texters and word usage, expecting to find that texting encouraged "unrestrained language." Instead, the results showed people who text more are more likely to reject new words rather than accepting them as possible words. The people who were more open to a range of new words were readers of traditional media like magazines and books.

9. Texting makes it easier to lie:

   The Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia recently published the results of their study that paired students playing roles of stockbroker and buyer, with the stockbroker needing to unload a stock that will soon lose 50% of its value. Deals done via texting were 31% more likely to involve lies than those by face-to-face talks. And buyers who were lied to via text proved to be much angrier than buyers lied to in person.

10. Many people are addicted to texting:

    
    Researchers at the University of Maryland studied 200 students after 24 hours of no texting or other media. They found many of them were basically experiencing withdrawal, anxiety, and difficulty functioning. Dr. David Greenfield of the Center for Internet Behavior has compared constant texting and checking email to gambling addiction.

11. Most people still prefer a phone call:

    Nearly three-fourths of American adults text. However, while 31% say they prefer to be contacted by text message, fully half of adults still prefer a good old phone call. The findings were the result of a study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, the first such time the group has polled Americans' on their contact method of choice.

12. Banning texting while driving is not the answer:

    At least one group of researchers is making a case against laws banning texting while driving. Researchers at the Swedish National Road and Transport Institute found that driver education is more effective than a ban, partly because people would disobey a law and partly because hands-free devices meant to replace texting as a safer alternative do not actually lower crash figures.

13. Female teens text the most:

    Perhaps the only surprising thing here is that it's older teenage girls, not pre-teen girls, who send the most texts of any group. Girls 14-17 send a median of 100 texts a day. Pew's Internet and American Life Project also discovered that 87% of all teens in this age group have a cell phone, while only 57% of 12- and 13-year-olds have one.

14. Texting has spawned its own injury:

    Texting is convenient, but it could also be a pain in the neck. Dr. Dean Fishman has trademarked the phrase "text neck" to describe an ailment he is seeing conflicting more and more patients. He even started the Text Neck Institute in Florida to treat pain in the neck, back, arms, and shoulders of frequent texters. "Forward head posture" pain, his original diagnosis, did not catch on.

15. Predictive texting changes children's brains:

    
    Using the built-in dictionary when texting on a cell phone makes children prone to making more mistakes. An epidemiologist from Monash University in Melbourne studied children ages 11-14 who sent 20 texts a week and found that the autocorrect technology makes children more impulsive and less accurate in their learning.