Smartphone: Compulsive Texting In Teenage Girls Lowers Academic Performance

We all love our cell phones, but too much time in front of an artificially lit screen can be detrimental to our eyes and our attention spans.

New findings published by the American Psychological Association (APA) show that teenagers are the worst when it comes to spending all their time glued to their cell phones--whether's it's eating up plan minutes talking to friends or playing Candy Crush. And unfortunately, it's not just all fun and games; obsessive texting can lead to reduced academic performance. Yet researchers found this was just true for girls.

During this recent study, researchers surveyed 211 girls and 192 boys in the 8th and 11th grades. The students were required to complete a questionnaire that asked them how much texting took up their life and if they ever hid their texting habits. The questionnaire also asked them if they hid the behavior during school. Based on the results, the researchers created a "Compulsive Texting Scale" CTS to determine how texting might have interfered with academic performance.

Previous research has shown that teenagers send and receive an average of 167 texts per day, with texting preferred over talking on the phone or other certain forms of communication, according to The Daily Mail. Furthermore, an estimated 60 percent of adolescents reported that they text every day.

While boys and girls at this age period text about the same amount, they're doing it for different reasons, according to researchers. For instance, while boys are texting to share information, girls are communicating for social interaction.

"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," lead researcher Kelly M. Lister-Landman, PhD, of Delaware County Community College said, in a news release. 

"Girls in this developmental stage also are more likely than boys to ruminate with others, or engage in obsessive, preoccupied thinking, across contexts," she added. "Therefore, it may be that the nature of the texts girls send and receive is more distracting, thus interfering with their academic adjustment."

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