Anti-social texting study: New methods confirm old theory

A study examining teens' 'anti-social' text messages found that kids who 'talk the talk' also 'walk the walk.' While the study looks at the issue in a new way, the results are are nothing new, despite the dramatic headlines.

|
AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File
Cambria Bird, left, and Lauren Grayson, right, look over text messages on an iPhone, Oct. 25, 2010.

The methodology for study released this past week about teens and texting was new, but the findings don’t seem to break much new ground – unless the news media had picked up on what the researchers didn’t highlight. More on the reporting in a minute; first the study, published by researchers at University of Texas, Dallas, in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.

Past studies of teens’ “texting behaviors” relied on self-reporting. This one actually looked at the texts. The researchers gave 172 9th-graders (almost half and half boys and girls) around the country Blackberries and text-messaging service for a school year “with the understanding that their texts would be monitored,” PsychCentral.com reports. “The participants were rated before and after the school year for rule breaking and aggressive behavior by parents, teachers and in self reports.” At the end of the school year, four days of text messages per student were reviewed “for discussion of antisocial activities.”

“Basically,” said lead author Samuel Ehrenreich, they were trying to answer the question, “does talking about bad behavior predict bad behavior?” And what they found was that – although less than 2 percent of all the texts the researchers examined were anti-social – the anti-social texts “predicted increases” in “rule-breaking behavior” and “aggressive behavior.”

This hardly seems like news. The author himself likens texting to talking. So if one were to examine the tiny proportion of spoken communication that’s anti-social, would one be surprised if it predicted anti-social behavior? What’s interesting, here, is that the researchers seem to attribute influence not just to the content of the communication they examined but to the medium as well.

Ehrenreich referred to texting’s “unique characteristics that make it all the more powerful,” providing “a new opportunity for peer influence,” according to LiveScience.com. This at best muddies the conclusion. Is it based on the evidence gathered – the influence of peers expressed in the content – or speculation about the influence of the technology itself?

Fortunately, “the study’s collection of messages also found that texting could be a positive force for adolescents,” LiveScience reports, referring to the overwhelming majority of texts (98+ percent) that contained “positive, meaningful communication,” as Ehrenreich described it.

But that wasn’t news, that the authors were able to use only about 2 percent of all the collected texts to map them to reports of anti-social offline behavior. It didn’t show up in coverage at AlbanyTribune.com, where the headline read: “Beware The Texting: Text Messages Make It Easier For Kids to Misbehave.” Other headlines about the study were “Teens’ Texts Predict Bad Behavior” and “Delinquent Behavior May Arise from Anti-Social Texting.” At least the latter qualified “texting” with “anti-social.”

Texting among adults is mainstream, the Pew Internet Project reported three years ago, so why focus research about texting and anti-social behavior particularly on young people? And if researchers must, then what does this study add to the public discussion about youth and social media when research has already found that a young person’s psychosocial makeup and home and school environments are better predictors of online (and most probably on-phone) risk than any technology he or she uses? [That was in the comprehensive lit review done by the Internet Safety Technical Task Force at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society in 2008.] Maybe we needed the phone part confirmed? Anyway, because of all the hyperbole in media coverage of youth and technology and to be fair to youth, research that focuses on young people’s deviant behavior in media as well as the coverage of it need a critical eye.

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Anne Collier blogs at NetFamilyNews.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Anti-social texting study: New methods confirm old theory
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/Modern-Parenthood/2013/0919/Anti-social-texting-study-New-methods-confirm-old-theory
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe