According to a 2010 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center one in three teens send more than one hundred texts a day. In a 2008 editorial, the American Psychiatric Association included texting as a part of a disorder known as “Internet addiction.” A disorder that is characterized by excessive text messaging and often times causes a person to be at a loss for time and possibly loss of basic duties. It’s been said people that have cell phone addiction are just as addicted to their phones as much as a drug abuser is to their narcotics.

 Even more concerning than the anxiety or lack of sleep is the growing concern about sending indecent and explicit pictures of themselves through their cell phones. No one knows this better than the family of Hope Witsell. As reported by Michael Inbar, a Today.com contributor, after her inability to get back together with her boyfriend Hope decided to try and get his attention by sending him an inappropriate and explicit picture of herself. The picture landed in the wrong hands. Word spread around the school. Hope was called very degrading and hurtful things suggesting that she was into inappropriate behavior. The student body was relentless in the name calling and sexual slurs to a point where Hope could no longer take it. A short time later she committed suicide.

 Parents everywhere are very concerned about such a tragedy happening to one of their children. Although some children will still act on their freewill, the best strategy is to “Train up our children in the way they should go and when they are old they won’t turn from it” (Proverbs 22:6). We find in the book of Deuteronomy (6;6-9)”These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” In the eleventh chapter verses 18&19 the book of Deuteronomy repeats this instruction almost verbatim. Paul encourages fathers to “not” exasperate your children; instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.