Compulsive texting would degrade the school performance of young people, especially teenage girls, according to an American study.
Texting all day long hurts school performance, according to a study by the American Psychological Association. This finding, rather predictable, would be especially true among young girls, according to the results of this work published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture.
167 SMS per day
The researchers looked at adolescents who write messages compulsively. According to data from the scientific literature, young Americans receive an average of 167 text messages per day. These media have emerged as the preferred means of communication between them.
However, according to the authors of the work, the question is not so much about the frequency – certainly important – of texting, but about the attitude of the message writer. “The compulsive nature of texting seems problematic, more so than the quantity of messages sent,” they note.
Scientists interviewed 403 middle school students (211 girls, 192 boys) who followed their schooling in grade 4th (eighth grade in the United States). The objective is to determine the impact of their frantic mailings on their schooling.
Level of concern
To assess this impact, the authors took several parameters into account – the participants’ ability to concentrate when texting, their ability to multitask, their degree of concern with their virtual conversation, or even their propensity to hide in order to tap on their keyboard. Questionnaires asked them about their academic performance.
However, according to the results, there is indeed a negative relationship between compulsive texting and school performance… but only among young girls. According to the authors, such a gender difference could be explained in the involvement of the participants in their conversation.
Boys would be more likely to exchange fairly neutral information, while girls would engage in deeper conversations, which require a higher degree of involvement. In addition, the authors believe that the sense of communication is more developed in adolescent girls. Hence a tendency to be more “addicted” to texting, even if it means forgetting about school.
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