Texting is nothing to “LOL” about, from a parent’s perspective.  That’s because today’s teens are glued 24/7 to their cell phones, clicking away hastily as they carry on lengthy conversations with friends.

Most parents have a hard time understanding why their kids would rather text message a friend than pay a personal visit or use the telephone.  But the fact remains that technology is completely integrated into how teens communicate.  They start their days “IM’ing” friends or checking to see who’s online.  Later in the day, the spend hours texting friends on their cell phones, with some teens sending over 5,000 text messages a month. 

“Even when they’re not on their cell phones or test messaging, the devices are on and kids are distracted by them,” says Dr. Michael Osit, a clinical psychologist and author “Generation Text: Raising Well-Adjusted Kids in an Age of Instant Everything.”

Osit points out that inter-machine interaction plays a huge role in the social development of techno-oriented kids.  This can be harmful because children don’t automatically understand social skills - they have to practice them.  “In normal situations, there is a progression in a relationship that has natural, appropriate boundaries are dismantled prematurely,” he says. ”They become too intimate and too close, and they say things they normally wouldn’t say in person.”

Another problem with texting is that parents are not privy to the communication that takes places, in the old days, parents were able to observe and teach their children about what was appropriate and inappropriate in relationships, which is not the case in today’s private world of technology.

When excessive texting becomes a ssubstitute for face-to-face and voice-to-voice interaction, it can stunt communications skills, because there is a lack of nonverbal signs and signals - which are just as important as words.  “About 60 percent of a message is nonverbal, so teens dependent on testing lose out on how to truly communicate with people,” says Osit.

Bullying is also a problem, as many teens send mass messages via e-mail or their cell phones.  “The invisibility of techno talk can be perilous in many cases and can have damaging effects on children,”  Osit explains.  For example, in 2006, a Missouri teenage committed suicide after being the victim of a cruel cyber hoax.

Despite all the problems with this communications technology, Osit notes that it does have some bbenefits.  In some ways, it helps teens conquer timidity when they’re very shy.  “If practiced with proper monitoring, this ttechnology can help improve kids’ social skills.”

Two-thirds of parents say they are uncomfortable with their children participating in online communities, and about half of them say online communities, and about half of them say online predators are a threat, according to a new study from the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication.

The upside for most parents - 80% - is that they consider the Internet a valuable source of information and more important than television, radio, newspaper and books, according to the study. That figure is up from 66% in 2006.

Other findings include: a quarter of parents said their kids spend too much time online, a percentage that’s risen for three years in a row. And 13% of parents said their children are spending less time with friends as a result of the Internet, another figure that grew for the consecutive year.