Lemondrop

A new study suggests -- nay, gasps -- that teenagers who send a lot of text messages (known as "hyper-texters") are more likely to get into things like drinkin' and sexin'.

After surveying over 4,000 teenagers (how did they get them to pay attention for that long?), researchers found that one in five of the kids were hyper-texters, and one in nine were hyper-networkers (meaning they spent three or more hours a day on Facebook and the like). One in 25 was both. Hey, guys? GO PLAY OUTSIDE!

Now, no one's saying that one causes the other, but this study has shown definitively that in teenagers, there is a link between hyper-texting and experiencing "bad kid behaviors" like sex, drugs, alcohol, fighting and smoking. Hyper-networkers were less likely than hyper-texters to have sex (maybe they're too busy Facebooking), but they were just as prone to drinking and fighting.

What's going on here? Maybe hyper-texters are the kids who, 10 years ago, would join clubs to hang out with people, or spent their time at home building malfunctioning bombs / dyeing their hair when they weren't out causing a ruckus. Maybe it's a lack of a parent around to tell them to PUT DOWN THAT DAMN PHONE, as the study also found that most of the hyper-texters were females from a single-parent home. Maybe hyper-texters are lonely and bored, and so they're constantly texting to find out where the party's at on top of also feeling frustrated with how they are lonely and bored.

Call us old-fashioned, but we think an important part of being a teenager is feeling alone and like no one understands you.