It never fails. If something gets popular, the media covers it in waves. First it reports on the popularity of said thing. Then it highlights benefits (often involving its links to capitalism in some way, though that usually comes later in the line of benefits). Then the news reports on the physical dangers.
KTVU Morning News just did a piece on the "dangers" of teen texting. Texting has previously been covered as a great way to keep in touch, then it was covered as helping commerece as a great way to keep people informed about television shows and sales. Now we learn that teens who text (which according to KTVU was everybody at one area high school) are in danger. First the piece informed viewers that teens texted during class! Yikes! What next? Premarital sex? Drugs? Wii? Then it the station reported it may be dangerous to a teen's long term health. How? That's where it got interesting.
The tease to the piece informed viewers that a piece on how texting could be bad for a teen's health was coming up. The actual report said something totally different. The report said that officials were unsure if or how it could affect a teen's health, but speculated that it could cause fatigue, poor grades (not really a health issue by any stretch of the imagination) and "anxiety."
None of this was proven. It was speculation ... as usual. There will be a study published soon, though how accurately that can assess someone's long term health is uncertain, as this is a fairly new phenomenon.
The bottom line? If your teen texts at the very least he'll be tired and get poor grades (hope you like having him at home). At the worst end of the scale, he'll explode at random one day and shower people nearby with deadly radiation.
2 comments:
I suppose if a teen stays up all night texting, they'll suffer fatigue, which could lead to poor grades and anxiety. That's really the only scenario in which I can see the act of punching little buttons on your phone leading to those issues.
You forgot Lupus.
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