‘On call’ all night can leave texting teens tired out - The Boston Globe

Excerpts from a scary snapshot

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.

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A Pew Research Center study from 2010 reported that more than four out of five teens with cellphones sleep with the phone on or near the bed, sometimes falling asleep with it in their hands in the middle of a conversation. Pew researchers did not ask whether the phones were on, but Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist, said “many expressed reluctance to ever turn their phones off.’’

‘On call’ all night can leave texting teens tired out - The Boston Globe