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Dangers of Texting

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Submitted By tclivio
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Clivio 1
Thomas Clivio
Professor Marie Salamone
College Writing I
October 17, 2012

Dangers of Texting

With the advent of the cell phone came a new means of social media and communication called texting. But with all the benefits an emerging technology can offer, we can’t always predict what the impact will be on our society. This new form of communicating brought with it its own dialogue as well as its own dangers. We’ve seen an increase in accidents caused by distracted teen drivers who were texting, a new medium of bullying in our schools, and the newest trend that’s become popular with teens and young adults known as “sexting”. As cell phones become more popular, and the age of cell phone users gets younger and younger, so will the person who will be exposed to sexting. As our younger generation gets ever more influenced by the proliferation of sexually explicit images in the media and scantily dressed celebrities, the more difficult the job of a parent will become. How many more teens need to die from texting while driving or from committing suicide after sexting provocative images before we recognize this growing problem? With the introduction of texting to our youth and the impact it has on our society, we have been presented with a whole new set of concerns and it is clear that these concerns need to be addressed. The first forewarning of the dangers this new form of communication presented, came in the increase of distracted driver fatalities. The statistics paint a disturbing picture of just how big this problem is. An article in Forbes magazine reports that texting while driving causes 11 teen deaths every day and is the cause of 25% of all accidents with over 330,000 injuries each year. The NHTSB (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) reports that texting and driving is 6 times more dangerous than driving while

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