texting

You’ve probably seen the countless YouTube videos of people so transfixed by their mobile phones that they walk into inanimate objects or fall into fountains. And while it’s easy to laugh at such incidents, the truth is that distracted pedestrians can cause serious harm to themselves or other people — and now one New Jersey town is taking a stand.

If you want a truthful answer to a question, don’t ask it via text message — recent research suggests people are more likely to lie when using the modern form of communication.

According to a survey of 2,227 adults by the Pew Research Center, the average text message user sends or receives an average of 41.5 messages a day. How much someone texts is not surprisingly tied to how old they are. Those in the 18-to-29 age group send or receive an average of 87.7 texts a day, whereas that total is only 4.7 for those in the 65-and-over group.

Of all the new words that technology has thrust into the lexicon, “sexting” was voted most annoying.

If you've been anywhere near a web browser this week, you've probably already seen the security video of a woman walking through a mall while texting. Not paying attention to her surroundings, she tripped and fell into a fountain.