101 Do's, Don'ts & Double Don'ts on Texting

By: Liz Hounshell and Erika Karres

For better or worse texting has now become a primary mode of communication for young people. As with other new technologies texting brings new wonderful opportunities for increased ease of communication and social networking. Unfortunately texting also brings with it a dark side filled with many inherent dangers. Texting has sometimes been used in very cruel ways to inflict social/emotional pain on others. Texting in conjunction with cyber-networking has opened up a whole new social world to young people that unfortunately provides many opportunities for abuse.

When young people use texting in inappropriate ways seemingly insignificant events can quickly snowball into critical challenges that can have a profound negative impact on the classroom the school and the community. These situations can have a devastating and long-lasting impact on young peoples' academic social and emotional wellbeing. And how students deal with these experiences can ultimately lead to increased academic failure to social/emotional harm violence and even to the loss of young lives.

Before writing this book the authors interviewed hundreds of people of all ages about texting. As a result important information was revealed that was sometimes quite surprising and revealing. Based on this investigation the authors decided to develop a practical book that could be used by adults to help educate young people about how to deal with the good the bad and the ugly sides of the world of texting that they are experiencing.

How to Use This Book
This book can be used for a classroom discussion on the topic of texting an individual student or adult who needs to learn the difference between positive texting and dangerous texting or for anyone who needs to learn all about the good the bad and the ugly of texting. The authors provide real-life stories about texting and an easy-to-follow thumbs up / thumbs down & double thumbs-down for a comprehensive list of texting behaviors and situations. It also provides periodic follow up discussion questions to help engage students in a conversation about each specific texting topic. This book also includes some guides and alerts to pass on to parents.