Surviving Text-Free

Can students go two days without texting and online chatting?  Can college students? Probably. But it’s not easy. Riverdale Country School in the Bronx tried it for two days.  Students found that even if they wanted to keep with the program, they’d forget. When asked about how they felt, they said they really wanted to text and said they learn to appreciate the convenience of this method of communication. They also found that a text-free Sunday, for example, was relaxing because they didn’t feel they had to video chat, check their Facebook page, or respond to all those messages that come in every day. One said, “I had to look for things to do.” While the Riverdale students seemed to survive no-texting or chatting without problems, in a similar experiment at the University of Maryland, researchers found students displaying “withdrawal” symptoms “similar to those of drug addicts going cold turkey.