Textitis

I was watching the nightly news yesterday and a report came on about teenagers texting. Normally, I would've just flipped the channel because I'm so tired of hearing about how everybody uses their cell phones too often. However, the targeted audience caught my eye. Every single person they interviewed or talked about was my age. They didn't ask a single person over the age of eighteen any questions about texting. The news report claimed that our generation has become addicted to texting and that more often than not, the texting is about absolutely nothing. They also claimed that teens are losing sleep over texting and that our academics are starting to dwindle because of this. Some scientists are even going as far as doing studies about texting and publishing books. They've deemed addictive texting a disease of our generation. Apparently textitis is becoming an epidemic of "generation x".

Sure, there are many of us that text constantly, our fingers moving maniacally over a tiny keyboard. However, I would like to point out that by making news reports like this that show an overwhelming amount of people claiming one thing, the media is grouping every single teenager together and putting a stereotype on us. The media does this to every young generation. Even my dad was saying how they put stereotypes on him and his friends when he was young. Is this fair? Is it fair to say that our generation is doing "too much" of something? If you truly think about texting and Facebook and Twittering, aren't we really just finding new ways to develop a stronger relationship with those around us? If anything, I believe that communication is at it's strongest within our generation. The older folks are just seeing too many new things and are afraid that with all of this communication, we're going to ban together and start a revolution or something when really, all we're trying to do is see what's going on in the world.