Texting, a chief form of communication for teens, millennials and older Americans, could contribute to the academic demise of high school girls. According to a new report published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture, compulsive texting harms the grades of teenage girls.

The findings from a report published Oct. 5, "The Role of Compulsive Texting in Adolescents' Academic Functioning," showed that teens would frequently forgo sleep in favor of staying up late to text with friends, family, and significant others. However, girls, not boys, are negatively affected by this compulsory habit. While the report doesn't necessarily paint a clear picture as to why girls are deeply affected, it suggested girls are more likely than boys to engage in preoccupied, obsessive thinking.

Approximately 403 eighth- and 11th-grade students from a rural Midwestern town were surveyed. The students were evenly divided by gender and academic performance. Researchers also created a compulsive texting scale that differentiated between texting frequently and texting compulsively. Researchers asked questions such as, "Do you find yourself frustrated because you want to text but you have to wait?" and "Do you fear that life without texting would be boring and unhappy?"

According to the study authors, compulsive texting was more complex than "frequent texts." Compulsive texting is habitual and feels almost necessarily, and involves trying and failing to reduce texting habits. Also, it involves defensiveness when challenged about behavior and frustration when not allowed to text. The researchers hesitate to use the word "addiction" when discussing the use of cell phones for texting purposes, refraining from using a clinical term that's often used to describe maladaptive behavior. Compulsive texting is an issue, but it isn't an addiction or a clinical disorder.

The data showed that girls were 20 percent more likely than boys to display compulsive behaviors regarding texting, and there was a definite connection between the texting behaviors of girls and their poor grades. There could be a number of reasons for girls' inclination toward compulsively texting, including the fact that boys frequently use texts to share information, while girls use texts for social interaction and to develop romantic, familial and friendly relationships.

While most respondents were primarily Caucasian in this particular study, U.S. Latinos tend to over index in technology, mobile device usage and they love to text. The young Latino population loves tech, and the only thing they love more than technology is socializing, evident by their heavily use of social media platforms. While there's no recent data showing how teenage Latinas' preoccupation with texting affects their grades, it'd be interesting to learn about the impact of texting on that particular subgroup.

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