Do You Text A Lot? Then You’re Shallow, Says University of Winnipeg Study

How many text messages do you send in a day? According to a University of Winnipeg study, students who send more than 100+ texts per day are more inclined to value wealth and image over leading an ethical life.

A study from the University of Winnipeg found that students who text that much are 30 per cent less likely to feel strongly that leading an “ethical, principled life” was important to them, compared to those who text 50 times or less a day.

Psychology professors Paul Trapnell and Lisa Sinclair say frequent texters show higher values of ethnic prejudice as well, based on a separate lab study. Data was taken from one-hour online surveys from 2,300 psychology students over a span of three years, asked about their personality traits, life goals and texting habits.

Survey results concluded 30% of students texted over 200 times per day, with 12% admitting to sending over 300 texts per day. Now that’s a lot of procrastinating.

The study was created to test the “shallowing hypothesis” from the book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, written by Nicholas Carr in 2010. The theory claims heavy use of texting and Twitter has changed our thought processes to become more superficial because these brief technologies produce rapid and somewhat shallow thinking.

“The values and traits most closely associated with texting frequency are surprisingly consistent with Carr’s conjecture that new information and social media technologies may be displacing and discouraging reflective thought,”

Even with these conclusions, both professors says there’s no reason to panic about our current generation turning out to be “morally shallow.”

Just recently the CWTA announced Canadians sent 71.5 billion text messages in the first nine months of 2012. How many times do you text per day?

[via CBC]

Want to see more of our stories on Google?

Add iPhone in Canada as a Preferred Source on Google

P.S. Want to keep this site truly independent? Support us by buying us a beer, treating us to a coffee, or shopping through Amazon here. Links in this post are affiliate links, so we earn a tiny commission at no charge to you. Thanks for supporting independent Canadian media!

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
9 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Ryan
13 years ago

That’s quite the headline.

Gary
Reply to  Ryan
13 years ago

I don’t want to be shallow.

Michael Noonan
Reply to  Gary
13 years ago

Too late!

Chrome262
13 years ago

LOL introductory psychology classes are the usually pool for these experiments I was part of these when I was an undergrad, and let me tell you, I screwed around with the questionnaires when I did it so I wouldn’t take anything of value out of this. Other then, holy crap 100+ a day, I get fed up with 20 or 30. and don’t get me started on emails lol.

Gary
Reply to  Chrome262
13 years ago

Yeah first year psychology is just memorizing terms for simple things but in more complex terms.

Chrome262
13 years ago

Hey there are always down on tech causing us to be bad human beings. Remember how video games where going to make us raging killers by the time we reached adulthood. And most of us are “productive” members of society. In fact there are new studies that say gaming actually can help you age better. Ah the pseudosciences are so charming.

Bety
Bety
13 years ago

So If I live in another city away from friends and family and I text allot, Im shallow..

Gary
Reply to  Bety
13 years ago

It doesn’t make sense does it?

Michael Noonan
Reply to  Bety
13 years ago

Regularly 100 plus per day? Yes, for sure you’re shallow.

9
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x