Why college students can't stop texting even at inappropriate times

A new study has revealed that texting is too tempting for college students even when it's inappropriate.

Penn State's Marissa Harrison said that they have looked at inappropriate texting behavior, like texting while driving, for instance, before, but what they wanted to find out is whether the people who are engaging in these forms of behavior even know whether or not it is the right thing to do.

The researchers suggest that college students are not necessarily trying to create new norms in texting behaviors, but that breaking with these norms is just too tempting for them in most cases. When they receive texts, the temptation to check their texts and send messages back is much greater than the urge to pay attention to their present situation.

In a survey, while most participants said they considered texting while taking a shower to be socially unacceptable, more than 34 percent said they did it anyway. Most agreed that texting during a religious service or while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance was wrong, but more than 22 percent texted during services and about 11 percent said they texted during the pledge. Approximately 7.4 percent texted while having sex, even though most admitted that it was wrong.

Researchers added that whereas some people may deem this odd, most college students agree that eating and toilet texts are the new normal.

Harrison suggested that people are all programmed to notice movement and change, so maybe those buzzes and bells of texting, just like certain sounds that used to indicate the charging of a predator, for example, reinforce the need to find out what is going on.

College students tend to be heavy text users, so it might be interesting to see if this holds up across other groups that may or may not use texting as often, concluded Harrison.

The study appears in the Social Science Journal.