I am going to say this on behalf of my own and probably 75% of the girls in this school: I love texting. I text everyday, and just like every other girl, I am pretty much glued to my phone. Of course, every now and then (aka probably every two days, depends on how mad my mom is), my mom decides to take my phone away for a couple days so I won't get addicted. And to be perfectly honest, no matter how annoying it can get, my mom is doing the right thing and protecting me from doing harm to myself. Very recently, maybe a month ago or something, there was an LA train wreck. A driver who was carrying 222 passengers on the train didn't see the red light and crashed head on to a freight train. 24 people were killed, and 80 were injured. The sad thing is, this would not have happened because the driver was TEXTING his friends. Because he was texting, he got distracted and didn't look on the tracks, and he killed 24 people, including himself.
A couple of years ago, A teenage boy named Patrick Sims killed a 63-year old cyclist because he was texting on the highway. He looked down for a couple of seconds, but it was enough for him to see that he couldn't get out of the way. As a result, he has no cell phone, his liscense was taken away from him, and he was sentenced to 300 hours of community service.
Texting is a very serious business and a huge distraction. We get so on task on what we were initially doing, but the moment we hear that buzz or ring, we stop what we do and we start texting our friends. Believe me, I know how much of a distraction it can be. Sometimes I do my homework and my friend texts me, I start texting them. Because of this, I stay up to 12 doing my homework because I wasn't as productive as I would have been if I didn't have my phone.
I'm not saying to stop texting altogether, because that would be very hypocritical of me, and I can't do that. I'm saying to not let texting be your life. I'm also saying this now especially to the sophomores or juniors who just got their license, because they don't know how much texting can do to them, or how badly they can get hurt by just looking at their phone for a couple of mere seconds. If you get a text while you're driving, wait until you're off the road, because if you don't, you are putting yourself in a life-threatening situation. And seriously, you don't need to answer that text at the moment, no matter how urgent the situation is. Do you want your car looking like this?
2 comments:
Those stories you provided scare me to think that they happened simply because of texting. Technology is only going to progress, so who knows what could happen in the future? Are hologram voicemails going to cause destruction on hovercraft highways? Personally, I think I'm one of the only people in the school who doesn't prefer texting to other forms of communication, but even i notice how much it can distract me from what is going on in the outside world, and that's one of the reasons I'm concerned to get behind a wheel alone, without my mom to make sure I put my phone out of arm's reach so that I don't grab it in the middle of driving and get into a terrible accident such as the ones you described. But I think every student should read this and see how destructive texting can be, so they can be more conscious about when there are inopportune times to do it.
um... all of the examples given are extremes. A lot of people text excessively, but it doesnt mean that they are going to end up killing dozens of people. In my opinion there is no such thing as "addiction" to technology; the people that you mentioned just have to learn to use it at the right time
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