Picture it: Red Bank, March 7, 2009, the Count Basie Theatre.

In an effort to expand her grandson's appreciation of his Celtic roots, an average, middle-age resident of the shore's Irish Rivera splurges on two tickets to an Irish Rovers concert.

She spends the next hour watching in horror as the teen whiles away the performance texting friends on his cell phone instead of enjoying the music.

Mid-way through the concert, she makes a futile effort to curtail the texting. When pressed to cease and desist, the teen bolts from the balcony leaving his granny in the unenviable position of having to sprint down the steps after him.

To the delight of everyone in the immediate area, they fail to return.

True story, one we tell as a party joke.

The only trouble is, the phenomenon of texting among young people isn't striking a growing number of physicians and psychologists as funny.

A front page article to that effect in the New York Times, May 26, generated a whole lot of buzz in the morning news cycle on television, talk radio and in the blogosphere. It sparked conversation during the work day according to a lot of my usual sources and was still prominently played that night on the evening news.

According to the article by Katie Hafner, texting is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation in a growing number of young people.

Haffner wrote that when Dr. Martin Joffe, a pediatrician in Greenbrae, Calif., surveyed students at two local high schools, he said he found that many were routinely sending hundreds of texts a day.

"That's one every few minutes," Hafner quoted him as saying. "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 plagued with sleep issues."

Some psychologists are theorizing that the amount of texting among teenagers may, among other things, be hindering their ability to maintain a thought and generating terrific anxiety about being out of the loop if they don't keep texting.

It may also take a toll on teenaged thumbs, wrote Hafner citing experts who say the repetitive motion can lead to musculoskeletal disorders.

Two days later, the subject of texting was still generating conversation in the diocesan Office of Family Life/Respect Life where concern is growing about the electronic life of kids.

One of the primary worries is that texting is replacing "real relationships that require person to person contact with machine to machine communication," said Linda Richardson, director of the Family Life/Respect Life Office.

And it doesn't just come down to kids, Richardson said.

"I've been stunned more than once by seeing a family come into a nice restaurant and watching the mom and dad take out their cell phones as soon as they sit down. The kids play on their electronic games or text while their parents talk," Richardson said.

She thinks it reflects an ever growing "artificial, electronic wall. It's making it difficult to live in the moment, even where experiencing worship is concerned. Technology is a wonderful gift but we need to use it in a way that helps us build personal relationships."

During Lent, there was a trend to give up cell phones but it doesn't seem to have sparked a long term effort.

With Richardson's thoughts in mind, wouldn't it be great to put it into practice again for Pentecost and try just speaking with tongues for the day?