texting teens + drugs/alcohol = clueless adults
Mind boggling, I’d say that is the right word to describe how I felt when I read this article on cnn about the coding teens use while texting about drugs and alcohol. It is honestly mind boggling the amount of code that is out there they teens are using to cover their tracks while communicating.
In my therapy practice here in Seattle, I have pretty open and honest conversations about teens and what they are texting and they teach me some pretty interesting stuff. But, in therapy, we are talking about texting – I’m not usually seeing their actual texts, and this article got me wondering if parents are actually looking at the texts their kids are sending or receiving. Personally, I didn’t realize that the entire paragraph could be encoded. Sure, I use a short cut or two in my own texting, but teens are using pretty obscure texts especially in the realm of sex, drugs, and alcohol. Just the stuff they don’t want parents to find out about. Check out this link to see just how in the dark you might be.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/08/26/kids.drugs.text/index.html
If you do check your teen’s phone, I would also be suspicious of no texts at all. I tend to feel like, if they are deleting texts, they are doing it for a reason.
Published by Robyn Howisey on August 31st, 2010 Tagged Community, Parenting