If you are not texting most of the time and not hooked to Facebook account and have not uploaded your latest photograph or of snaps of an outing or an event in your family, then probably you are not trendy teen. It has become a habit not only of today’s teens but also of other persons who own good mobile devices to remain in touch with their friends and loved ones through texting and other tools of social media. Texting has become more easy and cheaper thanks to free apps like Whats App etc. If you are not on WhatsApp then again, you will be considered misfit.
But this habit of texting has turned into passion now and especially the teens are addicted to it. As reported by PTI today, forty-three per cent of US high school students admit to texting while driving – a “national epidemic” in the country – according to a new study More than four in 10 of high school students of driving age, who were surveyed in 2011, reported texting while driving at least once in the past 30 days, according to a study to be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Washington.
Motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death among teenagers in the US, and using a phone while driving significantly increases the risk of accidents in this age group, AAP News, the official news magazine of The American Academy of Pediatrics, reported. The specific act of texting while driving has been found to raise the risk of a crash by 23 times, leading many to conclude that texting while driving is more dangerous than driving while intoxicated.
Survey results showed that males were more likely to text while driving than females (46 per cent vs 40 per cent), and the prevalence of texting increased with age (52 per cent of those over 18 years vs 26 per cent of 15-year-olds).
Although data is not available about this epidemic in India, but I have observed that the scenario here is also not good. Wherever, you go, you will find youngsters either texting or speaking on their mobile devices as if they are the most busy persons on this earth. It has become a trend now to keep oneself busy with texting and most of the times unnecesarily.
If technology has given us many advantages then it has negative aspects also and it is upto us to use the technology judiciously.
