Oct 05, 2015 01:27 PM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

New research suggests that adolescent girls who compulsively text are more likely than their male counterparts to do worse academically.

American researchers found that only girls showed a negative association between this type of texting and school performance, which included grades, school bonding and feeling academically competent.

"It appears that it is the compulsive nature of texting, rather than sheer frequency, that is problematic," Kelly M. Lister-Landman, lead researcher of the study, said in a statement. "Compulsive texting is more complex than frequency of texting. It involves trying and failing to cut back on texting, becoming defensive when challenged about the behavior, and feeling frustrated when one can't do it."

For the study, researchers surveyed 403 students in grades eight and 11 from schools in a semi-rural town in the Midwest. Most came from households with two parents (68 percent) and were primarily white (83 percent), which was representative of the demographic characteristics in the school district. They used this information to examine whether texting interfered with study participants' ability to complete tasks; how preoccupied they were with texting; and whether they tried to hide their texting behavior, among other relevant factors.

"Borrowing from what we know about Internet communication, prior research (e.g., Baron, 2004) has shown that boys use the Internet to convey information while girls use it for social interaction and to nurture relationships," Landman said. "Girls in this developmental stage also are more likely than boys to ruminate with others, or engage in obsessive, preoccupied thinking, across contexts. Therefore, it may be that the nature of the texts girls send and receive is more distracting, thus interfering with their academic adjustment."

The findings are detailed in journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture.

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