Adolescent Self-Described Volume of Texting: Discovering Relationships with Psychosocial Development and Interpersonal Relationships

Researchers explored the relationship among adolescent self-reported amounts of texting and self-esteem, self-construal, autonomy, and attachment. Data were collected from a high school in an urban area in the Mountain West. Participants included 180 students (53% female). Participants were asked to self-describe their volume of texting as high, medium, or low. Participants were also asked to complete the following scales: Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the Self-Construal Scale, the Case Inventory, The Adolescent Autonomy Questionnaire, and The Modified Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment. It is suggested that text messaging is more strongly related to self-esteem when texting is placed as the dependent variable for both males and females. Results showed that this was the pattern for each variable in question. Results also showed that Cognitive Autonomy mean scores were lower for females on four out of the five subscales of the autonomy measure. This finding was opposite from the mean scores of attachment, which revealed that females tend to have higher parental attachment scores than males.