I have attached a recent article on the number of text messages sent by the average American teenager. I have included it because I want someone to disprove it. I do not want to believe it. The claim of the article is that American teenagers send—on average—about 3300 text messages a month…or as one of my teachers told me “about six for every waking hour. To me, this is worrisome, but perhaps not for the reason that might immediately pop into your mind. Here is the article from CNN:
I am not concerned about kids talking with their peers—generally most of the texts are not headed to their parents. This has happened from time immemorial.
I am not concerned that most of the messages are silly or juvenile. This, again, happens regularly. Kids are immature and they communicate like it. Some of learning to communicate has to be done by practice, and, even though I am quite perplexed sometimes by the trouble that teenagers heap on themselves by acting stupid online (see Facebook at any given point in time) and their parents willingness to cut kids loose to act dumb, I try to be tolerant and forgiving of their practicing. As I review a recent cue of my own emails, I am reminded that it is not only teenagers who say and do stupid and juvenile things. Headmasters, too, are, at times, guilty.
I guess I am most concerned about the abstraction of it all. I worry that technology is, minute by minute, divorcing us from the actual world and the people in it—or I could say “the world that God made and the His images placed therein.” We connect with those images somehow through the text message, but the text message, with all its subtlety (and there is subtlety), misses voice tone, facial expression, and so many other parts of communication that make life human…and enjoyable. I do not want them to miss this and I worry that sending 3300 texts a month cuts down on this time.
Friends, foes, and students of mine have pointed out my Berryesque, nostalgic, luddite, tendencies. I am guilty, but not so fast. Think about this. I am not so nostalgic that I avoid the internet. I am posting this thought on a blog. My job is to help students have a full and blessed life. I worry that 3300 text a month might be a distraction from so many other things that would make life better, fuller, richer, and more enjoyable.
