Teens turning texting into a full-time habit

Morgan Smith is a master multitasker.

She can talk to friends, keep up with the debate team and walk and text all at the same time — and all on her cell phone — which is a must for most 15-year-olds girls.

In fact, according to a recent study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project that looked at cell phone habits among 12- to 17-year-olds, a third of all teens — and Smith figures she's one of them — sends more than 3,000 texts a month.

When that translates to sending more than 100 texts a day, walking at the same time becomes inevitable.

"It's just easier," Smith says of her texting habit. "It's impossible to, like, talk on the phone for the whole day, but if you want to talk to someone …"

"… and you have unlimited texting, but not unlimited calling," interjects Smith's 15-year-old friend Marcela Franco, then the obvious solution is to text, they imply without finishing the sentence.

According to the Pew study, which surveyed the cell phone habits of 800 teens last fall, 75 percent of youths age 12-17 own cell phones. That's up from 45 percent in 2004. In even more of a jump, 88 percent of the teen cell phone users are text-messagers, up from 51 percent in 2006. Texting has become so prolific that 77 percent of 17-year-olds contact their friends daily by text, but only 34 percent talk to their friends face-to-face daily outside of school.

"The most frequently given reason why teens send and receive text messages is to 'just say hello and chat,' " the study says. "More than nine in 10 teens say they at least occasionally text just to say hello, and more than half say they do this several times a day."

For 17-year-old Tess Gingery, texting is also a way to relieve boredom. She got her first cell phone shortly after she and her sister got lost at the Grand Canyon a few years ago. Her parents bought it for safety reasons.

Now Gingery pays $30 extra a month for a BlackBerry — she's on her third (the first got ruined when she got thrown in a pool while it was in her pocket) — that can do everything a normal cell phone can but also surf the Internet, "and all that fun stuff," she says.

But Gingery can see the negative side to texting. She has friends who are obsessed with their phones, sending up to 10,000 texts a month and crying when their phones are taken for any reason. Some of her co-workers will leave a customer to go answer their phones. And then there are the misread words and the miscommunications that happen — "drama" is common.