The teen under the sheets used to be reading a book with a flashlight. Now she’s text-messaging a boyfriend at 1 a.m.

Teens are famously sleep-deprived already, but experts say some are compounding the problem by staying up into the middle of the night to silently type messages to friends on their cellphones. The tiny phones — with increasingly sophisticated capabilities — are supplanting late-night computer messaging and making it even more difficult for parents to know when kids are really asleep.

“All this technology just enables teens to be connected 24/7,” said Anastasia Goodstein, the San Francisco-based author of Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online published this month. “And it’s literally 24/7.” …

“Is text-messaging contributing to sleep deprivation? Yes,” said Dr. Cora Collette Breuner, a professor of adolescent medicine at the University of Washington…

“We encourage parents to be aware when, where and how teens use their cellphones,” said Jayne Wallace, spokeswoman for Virgin Mobile USA. “Texting can be surreptitious.” …

From October through December, Verizon Wireless hosted 17.7 billion text messages, more than double the messages from the same period in 2005, according to spokesperson Georgia Taylor…

Parents likely remember talking on the telephone with friends for hours, said “Totally Wired” author Goodstein. “With technology now, teens just have many more tools to keep the conversation going. And more are under the parental radar.”

Source: Seattle Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2003644903_textsleep31.html