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Texting Away Your Dollars

by Tom Conlon on May 21, 2007 at 01:03 PM

Texting Away Your DollarsHog wild text messaging charges are on the loose! Last month, Washington, D.C. high-school student Sofia Rubenstein's phone bill arrived in the mail – and, boy, was she in trouble. The 17 year-old had piled up more than $1,100 in charges thanks to sending and receiving a whopping 6,807 text messages. Sofia gets to spend the summer working off her debt and, presumably, keeping her thumbs pickled in a tub of Ben Gay, but the truth of the matter is, she's no exception to the rule.

According to the CTIA Wireless Association, 158 billion text messages were sent nationwide last year, nearly double the year before. JD Power released a report recently that showed the number of cell phone calls sharply declining as text messages and mobile e-mail become more popular. In fact, a group called Teenage Research Unlimited has found that texting is the second most popular use for a cell phone after checking the time.

Most of the people responsible for all the messaging fall between the ages of 13 and 24. Not surprisinlgy, it's the parents who have been caught unprepared by this swing in technological preferences and who are, quite literally, paying the price. The wireless plan Sofia Rubenstein's parents had bought her, for example, came with only 100 free text messages per month -- less than half of what she was racking up per day.

Luckily, providers are responding. Last month Verizon introduced an unlimited texting plan because the company found that even its highest bundle of 5,000 free text messages couldn't satiate the appetite of America's text-hungry youth. And, we've all seen AT&T's new TV ad showing a Mom battling with her text-obsessed daughter over egregiously high messaging charges.

Some claim texting is making our kids dumber -– c'mon, 'they' say that about every new medium -- but it's clear that those little mobile messages are the new lingua franca of the digital age. That's until the next big thing comes along, of course.

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