Texting's cost for teens

What a bummer – having to work over summer vacation not to make money but to pay off one’s text-messaging debt. That’s what 17-year-old Sofia in the Washington, D.C., area faces because of a $1,100 monthly cellphone bill for 6,807 text messages last month, and her parents’ plan included only 100 free text messages, the Washington Post reports. “Forget minutes. It's all about the text allowance. It needs to be supersized, now that instant messaging has leapt from the desktop to the mobile…. Think it, text it, keep it short, have to have it,” the Post adds. Now, anyway, since texting teens is nothing new in Saudi Arabia or the Philippines, much less Europe and the rest of Asia. Last month Verizon Wireless "introduced an unlimited texting plan because even its highest bundle of free text messages - 5,000 a month - wasn't enough” for teens, according to the Post. It tells of a group of teens heading to Morocco with no phones, and of a mother wondering how they’ll deal with communicating the old-fashioned, face-to-face way.