Teen sends 14,528 text messages, dad gets 440 page bill
Greg Hardesty’s teenage daughter managed to send 14,528 text messages last month. When he received his 440 page AT&T wireless phone bill, he thought it was a mistake. The dad, age 45, said “First I laughed. I thought ‘That’s insane. That’s impossible.’ And I immediate whipped out the calculator to see if it was humanly possible.” He found out that it was, but just barely.
Reina, his 13-yr old daughter, would’ve had to send text message at the rate of 484 per day, or one every two minutes of every waking hour. When the father asked “Who are you texting anyway? Your entire school?” She replied, “A lot of my friends have unlimited texting. I just text them pretty much all the time.”
According to the report, she routinely messages a core group of “four obsessive texters,” all girls between 12 and 13 years old on her LG phone. Reina managed to text one of her friends who was sitting right next to her at a karaoke party.
Hardesty’s AT&T phone plan included unlimited texting for $30/month. If he would’ve had to pay standard AT&T rates the bill would’ve been a whopping $2,905.60 (at $0.20 per message).
According to Nielson studies, the average 13- to 17-yr old teen texts 1,742 messages per month. Hardesty admits that he texts around 900 messages per month (30 per day), which is about 700 more than his age group.
As a result of this last month’s activity, and in an attempt to curtail her texting activity, Hardesty and his ex-wife have now told Reina she can no longer send text messages after dinner.
wow .. just wow
Lool, Good luck dad
wow..one hypertrophied thumb and a one angry dad..lol
Wow that's alot! think the phone is nearly dead soon hehe
i had my phone for like an year and sent like 5000. that's 416 every month.
rapidlinks pls
why angry dad? i dont see any problem here, they have a plan with unlimited texting, and she made full use of it. i dont even know why its news to the press… the girl just used text messaging like everyone else uses instant messaging software.
How about that she talks with an eye to eye contact?
WOW but 500 sms per day will be impossible?
crazyness…500 sms might be my 1 month sms
baddab: maybe because she should be doing something more productive with her life rather than spending time writing over 500 texts a day to her airhead friends. You're obviously only 5 years old if you cant work that out!
"she can no longer send text messages after dinner."
oh yeah thats is going to cure the problem for sure… stupid parents…
Parents are so STUPID these days!!!
I get that he would want her to be doing more productive things, but what's the point of taking away like the last three hours of her day? Assuming they eat at around 6-7PM, then she goes to bed around 9-10PM…I mean, it would seem like that would be the dumbest time to take them away. Normally at night you have nothing to do but sit in your house anyway…especially at 13. Now, maybe he should take them away from 3PM-6PM because that's probably the time she'll be able to do productive stuff. Still, it's quite pointless…same thing as talking except different. Would he rather her just talk instead of text? I mean, you can get alot of talking in faster than you can text the same paragraph. 484 texts a day I'd think would be the equivalent of one hour of talking on the phone. But, what were the messages anyway? Were they each a paragraph long, or were half of them just "ok", or "wow", or "hey", or "no way", or a number of those acronym's that everyone uses when they text, such as "syt" which is "see you tomorrow" except the latter takes about 5x longer to type. I mean, I could type short texts (1-10 characters) at that rate in a matter of an hour or two, and the average text contains 5-10 words, which is just about equivalent to 50 characters. Certainly doesn't take that long if you are really good at texting…not to mention the letters you leave out…such as "your" being "ur", or "whatever" being "whtevr", etc.
Don't really see why he's making such a big deal…sure it's a lot, but maybe she likes to text and is good at it. Kind of like how some people can type at 125WPM+. I mean, I personally type at around 100WPM, and I'm sure someone could master typing on a cellphone just as well to where they can type 100WPM. I mean, some people are just good at things and that's the way it is. If she can text at 100WPM, that's probably around 10 texts per minute, or 600 texts per hour, which exceeds her daily amount. So see, that's not so hard to do in a small amount of time if you're good at it. This of course is assuming her friend replies fast, or she is texting multiple people at a time.
Who cares, if this is the most 'trouble' she gets in as a teen, big deal! Pretty impressive stats though!
I'd like to see a post on the kid who spends the longest amount of time per month playing WoW so we can laugh at him too!
Now she can be proud of herself for doing nothing else then pressing buttons für 1 month.
Someone will try to break her record soon… now that the news is out.
14,528 text messages - and they were all explicit sexual content
Surely after dinner is when they're more likely to want to text, at 13 all, from what I remember, my friends were at school with me.
Idiots
She is probably one of those annoying people who send chain letters to every single person in their phonebook. This type of person would also be the kind to add anyone's cellphone number to their phonebook just so they can feel popular.
"if u want ur best dream 2 come true send dis txt 2 10 otha peeps if u dont u might die" > Send to All > 200 contacts> sending > sent.
I hate chain texts. Its bad enough online but having to actually check my phone to find it pisses me off.
She needs a boyfriend.
that is sick..
#12 - Sheldon is that you?
14,528 text messages in a month is not as much as it seems. Your phone provider counts the messages sent and recieved. so its more like 7,264. And then you have to factor in that she average 1 message every 2 minutes and you can easily do that by fowarding 1 message to everyone in your phonebook. The most i had was 3,200 in a month and i thought that was alot.
wow,never even crossed 50 text messages since i started using a mobile phone
damn hey. Give that girl a keyboard before her thumb snaps off.
If she texts lyrics to everyone at a kareoke bar, does that count as singing?
Spose texting is an easy way to talk to firends in class without the teacher telling you to stfu. And a bit more secure than passing notes ;/.
why the hell people have this texting-mania I will never understand. I mean, it was cool when I was a kid cause I was also doin it, so I can understand the teens but not the adults texting that much… hell it's expensive, slow and you can't type as much as you can say in a phone call..
i do 50 in a year.
more of a caller
this thread is useless without pics. hot sms babe pics nao!
Now THATS what I call textual-Intercourse
@12 - Most enlightening.
I'm using a 1200sms/5Euros pack and usually i use about 600, 700 max.That is 1.94 sms /hour or 0.064 sms /2 minutes. not even close
I should call me gfriend and tell friend we should cut down some of the texting…
nvtl i'm sending about 500 pms though msn every day, thats about 15,000 pms/month.
Long story short: hey kiddo, use the net or get a life. whatever
Im so glad I threw my mobile phone away, frrrrreedom!
13yr olds, aren't the 13yr olds anymore and yes, they need to get a life! Oh yea, an they will have brain tumors by the age of 20.
No texting after dinner??? How 'bout being a real parent and taking the goddamned phone away.
Take the phone away and give her a physics textbook, maybe she will grow up to amount to something.
i suppose that i do not send 500 sms at all
Sick kids… I can't even reach a quota of 500 sms per month :s
Wow - Just wow, great post, and another great scene release.
RLSLOG's out doing its self again. The tech posts are stupid enough already (if I want that news I'll go to a tech blog) but this. I had to read out of disbelief, and now I'll never get that time back. Thank you for robbing another part of my youth RLSLOG.
Question? - Do you not think it would be more appropriate for RLSLOG to post p2p release of great screeners, TS, etc (I know they do the v rare time) then this crap. Neither of them are scene releases. Yet this makes it way up, along with Will's man crush for Craig F**king David.
O_O, damn
i send maximum 2-3 sms a day.
@37 - You probably spent more time writing that out than reading through.
I'd make her blow me or no phone. I think she'd be on her knees.
woo. I have send like 200 Or less In my Entire life. Now 21 years old.
@39 What the f**k are you talking about. It takes everyone in the world longer to write than read. So yeah, i did spend more time writing it than reading through. Do you have a point. I think I made mine clear. Maybe you should spend more time thinking before you write nonsense.
This is what I call spammer and pain in arse. I couldnt stand her. Receiving sms every single second it's a bit anoying.
The most i had have sent is about 50 a day. But they were for free I didnt pay a penny. All sent to various people at my phonebook LMAO
I mean since she's learning so much in school by paying so close attention to teachers and subjects it sounds like she'll be a doctor, or scientist when she grows up - y'know someone really smart.
good call taking the cell away after dinner, there's nothing like feeding an obsession all day, then taking a nice break to get ready for the next day at school.
#5: Are you serious? RS links to what?
Why so suprised? I send about 400/500 sms's a day. I don't get where's the problem.
#40… LOL I am with you there….
No texting after dinner isn't really that smart… Mostly if the dinner is at 7pm when I usually have mine… I mean she gets what… About 10,000 of those texts in during the day and after dinner she misses out.. Just Phone whip her to teach her a lesson.
"Sure sweetie, daddy will forgive you…"
*loads shotgun*
lol
I think it's really rude of my dad forbidding me to text my friends after dinner. That's when we discuss what TV show we will text each other about. Now I have do to the homework of the past year. I think it's weak.
huh… I never ever ever sent not even 1 message on the last 10 years because I never had a cellphone… and I DO NOT MISS IT!
i guess her thumb now is thicker than a concrete …. L.O.L
God bless America!
people use sms in that backwards country still? im constantly online so i never sms, just msn/facebook/yahoo/gmail chat……
yea, its free broadband. welcome to the future
C'mon guys, that's nothing else but AT&T smart viral marketing!
I'm actually more surprised by the prize of the texting i the US?!
Article says ordinary text-message is $0.20 ? That's just insane. Typical prize in Denmark is around $0.04. And my unlimited text plan all inclusive is $12 a month.
Crazy prizes :S
and this had to do with what release? post releases not worthless drivel. if i want that ill google text messaging.
@42
Actually, I can type faster than I can read, it's just that I have to spend extra time thinking about what I'm going to type. If it just all came straight to me there'd be no doubt I can type faster than I read.
Oh, and on another note, I'd hate to play thumb wars with her.
@13 "I'd like to see a post on the kid who spends the longest amount of time per month playing WoW so we can laugh at him too!"
He died!
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Two-Fanatic-World-of-Warctaft-Gamers-Have-Died-Becouse-Of-WoW-11821.shtml
most of you people are hypocrits and dont even bother to read… so you are telling me, you dont send messages over yahoo msn etc. ? do you count how many you send? so she does it with sms, for 30 dollars a month… pretty cheap and smart if you ask me. and she can do it where she wants, not limited to a computer. and i assume a data plan for mobile phones is more expensive. and to the guy who thinks he is grown up and calling me a 5 year old: dont worry about how she spends her time, you are the dude who wastes his "precious" time to comment about her here…
Lol, truly sounds like advertising, but if that's real, what was the kid trying to do? Starting her own "Gossip Girl" blog without the web interface?
I send over 5,000 SMS per month…
Watch the big deal????
I send over 5,000 SMS per month
What's the big deal???
Do kids really need cell phones anyway?
she never heard about internet??
i almost never text. . .
calling>texting
waaaaaay faster
i once used 12,000 txt messages
I used to work at Verizon and I seen this same thing happen. It was a 2000 dollar bill. I talked to the reps at the call center and they dropped the bill to 600 dollars.
All that "communication" and I'd bet $50 she can't spell or speak properly.
Nothing better to do?
I text the postman quite often too.
why is this all over the news online? who cares?
Kinda scary since she's only like 12 or 13 or w/e …. how is she able to do anything in school or well anything else. He needs to take that phone away for about 3 yrs. so she can you know …. live. He texts a lot too but 30 isn't too bad since I can send about 20 myself a day but I have too much to do to be sending more than that a day. A text every 2 mins. for every hour of everyday is crazy.
I once had a dog, but it died…
The girl is on steroid huh
please don't post these kinds of news i have no time to read all those those interesting comments up there!
This entire article totals 1556 characters.
Assuming neither you or here were using multibyte encoding.. this article is 1556 bytes, and if he each of her messages were as long as this entire article..
(14,528*1556) bytes per month to kilobits per second =
0.0671571116 kilobits per second
Meaning that on a miniscule little 56k AOL line she could have easily sent
56/0.0671571116 = 833.865523 times as many messages.
In otherwords, for about $5 a month, you could send $2,905.60*833.865523 ($2,422,879.66) worth of text messages.
Something tells me that the cell phone companies are over charging for such a small amount of bandwidth!!
Over charging by around 5 and a half orders of magnitude.
That's quite a bit more messed up then a teenage girl saying something every 120 seconds, folks..
1st of all when u have a certain amount of text messages like 400 or whatever the cell company will tell u after 401 or whatever cause it won't go thru what a rip-off AT&T
Agree 100% with #76 except for one thing..
There's no way in hell the average message length was that long.
Probably only a hundredth or thousandth that long.
So you are drastically understating how much of a rip off this really is.
I do see your logic though, by proving how crap this would be even if the messages were that big, there can be no doubt whatsoever that it is practically criminal to be charging this much for such small messages.
geez, what's the problem, who here doesn't download like 1 or 2 TB per month of illegal stuffs, it's like the same thing but more stupid.
i send more than that on average every month… I don't see how this is that big of a deal!
Stupid spoiled c#nt! If she was my daughter I would have left her with a ped0 perv for a month.
@58 - You might type amazingly fast, but if you can't read quicker you are a slow reader. Just a heads up, your spelling is fine, but you could have dyslexia. Might want to check it out.
P.s. Whats your point about reading through?? Did you have one?
hm, i send about 10 sms a month and i hate it every time i have to send one. one of the most unergonomic inventions.
http://www.webvipers.com/web/finance/
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http://www.webvipers.com/web/car/
http://www.webvipers.com/web/computer/
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http://www.zoodl.com/581
14,528 .. What a freak!
I bet She'll become a 30 year old virgin, with no Social life.
make it 50 @sarah