Is Texting sexual Stressing You Out?

Is Texting sexual Stressing You Out? Short Message Service (SMS), a text messaging service on mobile phones, is being used by a wider and wider audience for social communication. Instead of speaking directly to the person you’re communicating with, you use SMS, or “texts,” to send messages that the recipient can pick up at his or her convenience. You don’t have to leave a voice mail or send an email; with a text, your message is delivered directly through nothing other than your mobile phone service. It’s perhaps fair to say that among some groups, SMS- or “texting” - is replacing real-time voice communication because it is has the advantage of being readable at the viewer’s convenience. There’s no risk of disturbing someone during dinner, the middle of the night, or while the person is at work, school, or socializing. This is the theory of the text. In reality, however, heavy text message users send and receive texts virtually nonstop throughout their waking hours. They take advantage of the increasingly tempting services that mobile phone companies provide and have long, extended conversations with their social contacts that go on from the time they wake up until the time they go to bed, even checking their messages all night long. They walk down the street with their actual friends while each of them texts other friends, or perhaps each other. Out to dinner, at parties, or at family gatherings, their phone is always at the ready so that they can get and return the incoming flow of messages. At work or in school, it’s all they can do to put their phones down long enough to concentrate. We know well enough about the dangers of texting while driving. Although we think of teen drivers as the ones most likely to text while behind the wheel, a USA Today study in May 2013 cited adults as the real culprits with 98% of adults admitting to this behavior compared to 43% of teens. Given that adults are more likely to drive than teens, this statistic makes sense. It is nevertheless ironic that many of these adults are the parents who are trying to teach their children to leave the phone in the back seat. Adult pedestrians are also becoming increasingly likely to engage in “distracted walking,” in which they text and walk at the same time. The benefits of texting as a convenient way to reach your friends pale in comparison to these risks to your own life and those of other people. Short of having these calamitous outcomes, though, texting carries with it other, less obvious threats. As pointed out in a 2013 study by Karla Klein Murdock of Washington and Lee University, published in the journal Psychology of Media and Popular Culture, extreme texting can carry with it risks to an individual’s physical and mental health that accumulate over time. Murdock points out that there are inherent problems in any type of electronic messaging, but particularly texting, which places a premium on brevity and lack of explanation. Text messages are also written quickly particularly if the texter is doing something else so the content may contain typos and be otherwise ambiguous. As a result, a text message can be easily misunderstood by the recipient, creating stress in the relationship. Then there is the fact that, although they need not be read in real time, some recipients feel they must do so or seem rude, disinterested, or socially out of it. Thus, the texts need to be monitored and responded to as quickly as they come in, which in turn only increases their frequency even more. Klein Murdock wondered whether young adults experiencing stress in their relationships who, in turn, engaged in high levels of texting, would be at risk of some of the classic stress syndrome symptoms of burnout, low levels of psychological well-being, and poor sleep quality. Young adults are known to be the most frequent texters of all age groups, with a 2011 Pew Center Poll showing an average of 50 texts per day (compared to 10 in the 35-44 age group). They are also highly prone to interpersonal stress given the fact that they’re testing out all kinds of new relationships in their lives. Therefore, Klein Murdock believed this would be a perfect age group on whom to test the idea that stress + texting can lead to a host of life problems.