Teens and Cell Phones

According to a recent article by HarrisInteractive, cell phones are quickly becoming a social necessity for teens. More than 2,000 teens (ages 13-19) answered more than 100 questions about mobile technology and 40% reported they would die without their cell phone and 45% consider it to be the key to their social lives.

One interesting fact is that teens report spending as much time texting on their phones as talking. Girls and younger teens are slightly more inclined to text rather than talk, while boys and older teens lean more toward talking. Something cool - many say they can and do text without looking at the keyboard (teachers beware!).

Teens report liking to text as much as talk because they can multitask (46%), it is fast (42%), private (33%), fun (29%), easier (28%) and saves voice minutes (20%). My overactive brain wants to know - what can they do while texting, which requires two hands?

Is anyone else worried about this? I believe that words make up only about 10% of our communication, so I am imagining that people add a lot of meaning to the words they read - or maybe our communication is just becoming very shallow? I just do not get it!