Once upon a time, rock and roll music was to be the destroyer of America's youth. At one point it was gabbing on the phone. Later, it was MTV and videogames. Then came the threat of the internet.
Now, naturally, it's texting that promises to ruin our nation's precious little teens.
I actually feel a little sorry for the reporter -- this sounds like the result an editorial mandate to "get me a story on that texting thing, I hear parents don't like it." So, you end up with a story filled with things like:
Pam wonders: What will this generation learn and what will they lose in the relentless stream of sentence fragments, abbreviations and emoticons? "Life's issues are not always settled in sound bites," Pam says.
And:
The American Journal of Psychiatry published an editorial last year by psychiatrist Jerald J. Block, suggesting that addiction to the Internet and text messaging be included in the diagnostic manual for mental illnesses.
Ah, the American drive to pathologize every last avenue of life. Doesn't it make you feel all safe and coddled?
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