Compulsive Texting bad for girls’ grades
Too much texting is bad for girls’ grades, a study by the American Psychological Association. But boys can text all they want and remain unaffected.
“Compulsive texting is more complex than frequency of texting. It involves trying and failing to cut back on texting, becoming defensive when challenged about the behavior, and feeling frustrated when one can’t do it.” said lead researcher Kelly M. Lister-Landman, PhD, of Delaware County Community College.
Researchers surveyed 403 students (211 girls, 192 boys) in grades eight and 11 from schools in a semi-rural town in the Midwest US. Most came from households with two parents (68%) and were primarily white (83%), which was representative of the demographic characteristics in the school district.
Girls do not text more frequently than do boys, but they appear to text for different purposes, Lister-Landman said. “Borrowing from what we know about Internet communication, prior research has shown that boys use the Internet to convey information while girls use it for social interaction and to nurture relationships,” she said.
“Girls in this developmental stage also are more likely than boys to ruminate with others, or engage in obsessive, preoccupied thinking, across contexts. Therefore, it may be that the nature of the texts girls send and receive is more distracting, thus interfering with their academic adjustment.”
The researchers noted that this study was limited by consisting of self-report responses from primarily white students in a small town in the Midwest. Future research could entail observing students while texting, scrutinizing monthly phone bills and interviewing parents, for example. “In addition, it would be interesting to study adolescents’ motivations for texting, as well as the impact of multitasking on academic performance,” Lister-Landman said.
The study was published in the APA journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture.
Category: Features, Health alert
