Hyper-Texting Teens Have More Sex, Do More Drugs

New research shows that teenagers who send more than 120 text messages per day are more likely to have used drugs and alcohol or to have had sex than teenagers sending fewer texts. The study, led by Dr. Scott Frank, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Case Western Reserve University, doesn't suggest that texting leads to sex; it just points out that there is a relationship between the two.

"If parents are monitoring their kids' texting and social networking, they're probably monitoring other activities as well," said Frank, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

Frank was scheduled to present the study Tuesday at a meeting of the American Public Health Association in Denver.

The study was done at 20 public high schools in the Cleveland area last year, and is based on confidential paper surveys of more than 4,200 students.

It found that about one in five students were hyper-texters and about one in nine are hyper-networkers - those who spend three or more hours a day on Facebook and other social networking websites.

About one in 25 fall into both categories.

Hyper-texting and hyper-networking were more common among girls, minorities, kids whose parents have less education and students from a single-mother household, the study found.

Read the full story at the Associated Press.