On the Cell and Text Messaging 101

The Text Messaging Phenomena

Teens and silence don’t typically go hand and hand. If ever there was a boisterous group, it’s teens, especially teenage girls. When they’re amongst themselves there’s no end to the chatter. But get them within earshot of parents and a transformation takes place.

The chatter stops immediately and is replaced by the subtle sound of rapid tapping. You see their cell phones yet hear no voices. With heads down and fingers moving at blazing speed, those teens are using their phones, but they’re letting their fingers do all the talking!

Welcome to the world of teen text messaging, a world that most parents can’t even begin to understand. It’s a world in which language as parents know it has been replaced by an abbreviated phonetic language and indecipherable acronyms, most of which does not make a bit of sense to the untrained eye. And that’s exactly why teens love their text messaging!

With text messaging seeming so labor intensive to the uninitiated, you wonder why anyone would go through so much trouble, especially when it’s so easy to pick up the phone, dial a number and speak in English (or whatever your native language is). Well the answer is simple. With text messaging, teens know that parents can’t overhear conversations. And that means there’s no longer any need to walk around the block just to have a private conversation.

What about chat logs?

The teens actively involved in text messaging also know that with a few more taps they can wipe out any evidence of conversation simply by deleting their text message logs. How smart.

Fortunately, technology is smarter.

Now there are several ways parents can monitor their teen’s text messaging activity in real time. Software that lets you view text messages, photos and emails sent and received by your teen is now available to parents everywhere. For a nominal charge you can be alerted to all of the activity taking place on your teen’s cell phone including the ability to review call logs (calls dialed and received) and any changes made to the address book.

The way the software works and how you access this information depends on the application, but that’s not what really matters. What matters is that parents now have the ability to monitor cell phone activity just like they can monitor computer usage. And they can do it even if those text messages have been deleted.

If you think using software like this amounts to prying or invading your teen’s privacy, think again. This is a way you can keep your teen safe.

But first you have some studying to do. If you have any hope of making your efforts really pay off, you’ll have to know how to decipher these text messages. Here’s a handy list of 50 acronyms you’re likely see as you peruse these logs.

Shocked by what you see on this list? Your teen isn’t. This type of correspondence goes on all the time. And that’s exactly why you need to know who your teen is communicating with and what’s inside those never-ending text messages.