Getting crafty to avoid punishment is what most kids do best, but I wonder if this list is really a new texting code used by the young folk, or a code used only by the kids who were caught up in this particular incident? Either way, I’ll never look at the number 8 the same way again.

Link

Sleep expert Dr. Marcus Schmidt says he’s starting to see more cases of sleep texting.

“Four out of five kids that have cell phones sleep with the cell phone in the bedroom, next to their bed and only one in ten actually turn it off,” Dr. Schmidt said.

He says sleep deprivation can trigger common motor behaviors during sleep, including reaching for the phone when it goes off.

Link -via Dave Barry | Photo: Flickr user proudcanadianeh

This Tweet from @shawngold was turned into a Twaggie by political cartoonist Mike Luckovich. Multitasking skills are often self-overestimated. Link

Brookline 10th-grader Ashley Olafsson sleeps with her cellphone under her pillow so she doesn’t miss “emergency’’ texts — “like if a friend broke up with her boyfriend.’’ Stephanie Kimball of Waltham, 14, is also available for urgent overnight correspondence, such as, “Hey, seeing if you’re awake.’’ Dedham ninth-grader Courtney Johnson gets as many as 100 texts while in bed. “I just don’t feel like myself if I don’t have my phone near me or I’m not on it,’’ she said.

Sure, all that middle-of-the-night communication leaves them tired, but as Olafsson explained, “It’s impolite not to respond if someone is coming to you with their problems.’’

With teenagers sending and receiving an average of 3,276 texts per month in the last quarter of 2010, according to the most recent statistics from the Nielsen Co., it’s no wonder that Michael Rich, director of Children’s Hospital Boston’s Center on Media and Child Health, is starting to see young patients who come in exhausted by being “on call’’ or semi-alert all night as they wait for their phones to vibrate or ring with a text.

He and his patients’ parents were initially baffled by the children’s increased sleepiness because bedtimes hadn’t changed, he said. “Who would think to ask a kid, ‘Do you sleep with your phone under your pillow?’ To us, it sounds like torture.’’

Yes, that’s right: the average teenagers send and receive 3,276 texts per month! Link

This security camera footage from a mall shows a woman paying too much attention to her text messages and not enough to the demanding task of avoiding large objects while walking. She ends up getting soaked.

via Super Punch

Previously
The Danger of Texting and Walking: Teenager Fell Into a Manhole

AT&T produced this documentary about what happens when overconfident drivers think they can multitask -sending text messages while driving. It’s not worth it. -via Metafilter

When you thought texting while driving is bad, someone out there took it up a notch. Here’s the multitasking driver, who’s reading a book, using a Kindle AND talking on the phone at the same time while driving on the freeway. BuzzFeed has more: Link [embedded YouTube clip]

Many years ago, while riding on the school bus, I saw my own version of the multi-tasking driver: he was shaving (yes, with shaving cream and razors) while driving.

The EU is proposing a different type of “train,” which would be comprised of a mixture of trucks, buses, and passenger cars closely following one another in a slipstream, much as race cars do at professional tracks.  The project’s acronym is SARTRE (SAfe Road TRains for the Environment).

The lead vehicle would be handled by a professional driver who would monitor the status of the road train. Those in following vehicles could take their hands off the wheel, read a book or watch TV, while they travel along the motorway. Their vehicle would be controlled by the lead vehicle.

The idea, of course, is to improve fuel economy and to relieve congestion by allowing a greater number of vehicles to occupy a given area of the roadway.  But notice how this concept also solves the problem of texting-while-driving, by removing the “driving” component and allowing the driver to spend his/her entire time texting.  Sounds perfectly logical to me.  What could possibly go wrong?

Link

Addendum January 2011:  The BBC is reporting that field trials using real vehicles have now gotten underway in Sweden.

Once the lead vehicle is in charge, the driver of the car is seen taking his hands off the wheel, reading a newspaper and sipping coffee as the journey proceeds.

Alexa Longueira, 15, was walking on Victory Boulevard with a friend at about 5 p.m. yesterday, preparing to send a text, when she felt the ground give way.

"She literally just handed me the phone and I opened it [and] I felt this big drop," the Susan E. Wagner High School sophomore said.

"It was four or five feet, it was very painful. I kind of crawled out and the DEP guys came running and helped me. … They were just, like, ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’" [...]

The family said it intends to file a lawsuit.

Whether Alexa was sending a text or not shouldn’t make any difference, Mrs. Longueira said, because workers never should have left the manhole unattended. And while she’s thankful the sewer wasn’t full at the time, that didn’t make it any less gross.

"Oh my God, it was putrid," she said. "One of her sneakers is still down there."

The Staten Island Advance has the story: Link (Photo: Jan Somma-Hammel/Staten Island Advance)

"Let your kid text during dinner! Let your kid text during school! It pays off," 15-year-old Kate Moore said Tuesday after winning the LG U.S. National Texting Championship.

After all, she said: "Your kid could win money and publicity and a phone."

For the Des Moines, Iowa, teenager, her 14,000 texts-per-month habit reaped its own rewards, landing her the competition prize of $50,000 just eight months after she got her first cell phone.

Moore, with a speedy and accurate performance, beat out 20 other finalists from around the country over two days of challenges such as texting blindfolded and texting while maneuvering through a moving obstacle course.

In the final showdown, she outtexted 14-year-old Morgan Dynda, of Savannah, Ga. Both girls had to text three lengthy phrases without making any mistakes on the required abbreviations, capitalization or punctuation. Moore squeaked through by a few seconds on the tiebreaking text, getting the best two out of three.

Link – via Technically Incorrect (Photo: Frank Franklin II/AP)

Link – via neowin