Study Time!

Caught the tail end of this one on CNN this morning:

Study: Hyper-texting teens more likely to smoke, drink, have sex

FTA:

All that texting and social networking by teenagers could come back to byte them.

A new study by the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine links poor health behaviors -- including smoking, drinking and sexual activity -- to hyper-texting and hyper-networking.

I'm so glad someone conducted a big fancy study to tell us that kids who have more social interaction are exposed to more experiences. I mean, that's not what the story says the data shows, but really, what other logical conclusions could be drawn from these results?

I've seen lots of studies reported in such a way as to imply causation, usually through clueless, sensational, and/or inflammatory headlines. Often the subject is something meant to strike a righteous fear into the heart of parents about what is silently, secretly killing their children.

But the typical dumb study results story does not usually feature a dumb quote from the study's lead researcher. This one does:

"The startling results of this study suggest that when left unchecked texting and other widely popular methods of staying connected can have dangerous health effects on teenagers," said Scott Frank, lead researcher on the study. "This should be a wake-up call for parents to not only help their children stay safe by not texting and driving, but by discouraging excessive use of the cell phone or social websites in general."

Congratulations: you have just blatantly exposed your agenda and thus discredited yourself.

The implication is that lots of texting causes drinking, sex, and other risky behavior. This is infuriatingly dumb. But it taps into those righteous fears, and thus gets clicks, so why bother bringing logic into the equation?