People today text while they drive, they text while they eat, and kids text while they are in class. Texting has changed the way mobile phone users communicate for the better and according to some for the worse.

The New York Times (NYT) reports that some physicians and psychologists fear that the overuse of texting is harming children in America – it also believes that texting can lead to anxiety, distraction in school, and falling grades. Doctors worry that the overuse of texting may also lead to repetitive injuries and sleep deprivation.

The NYT talked to Dr. Martin Joffee, a pediatrician from California, who claims that many teens commonly send hundreds of texts per day. Joffee said, "That’s one every few minutes. Then you hear that these kids are responding to texts late at night. That’s going to cause sleep issues in an age group that’s already plagued with sleep issues.”

There are no studies that show empirical evidence that texting causes any kind of harm, researchers studying the effects of texting point out that the rise in texting is too recent for any conclusive data. However, MIT researcher Sherry Turkle has been studying teens in the Boston area for three years and says that texting could be affecting the way that adolescents develop.

Turkle told the NYT, "Among the jobs of adolescence are to separate from your parents, and to find the peace and quiet to become the person you decide you want to be. Texting hits directly at both those jobs."

The problem, according to Turkle, is that the fast and easy access to communication between kids and parents leads adolescents to ask parents to make the decisions for them that they need to be making for themselves in order to develop. She also says that the constant vibrating or ringing of the phone makes it hard to concentrate and get quiet time.

Turkle added, "If you’re being deluged by constant communication, the pressure to answer immediately is quite high. So if you’re in the middle of a thought, forget it."

Michael Hausauer, a California-based psychotherapist says, "Texting can be an enormous tool. It offers companionship and the promise of connectedness. At the same time, texting can make a youngster feel frightened and overly exposed."

Mental health professionals may worry about the well-being of text message deluged teens and tweens, but physicians worry more about the physical side effects of mass texting. The act of texting could be taking a toll on the thumbs of teens in the same way that typing takes a toll on the wrists of many computer workers. One teen interviewed by the NYT said that she got painful cramps in her thumbs from texting on her LG phone.

Peter W. Johnson form the University of Washington says that it's too early to tell if stress form texting could be causing damage. He says, "Based on our experiences with computer users, we know intensive repetitive use of the upper extremities can lead to musculoskeletal disorders, so we have some reason to be concerned that too much texting could lead to temporary or permanent damage to the thumbs."

At the same time some researchers and health care professionals worry about the toll texting is taking on teens today, some studies show that there is a benefit to texting. According to a recent study, texting improves language skills in children.