A new study from the American Psychological Association (APA) suggests that teenage girls who compulsively text are more likely to perform poorly in school. The research, published online Oct. 5 in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Coverage, found that text distractions did not affect boys’ academic performance.

“It appears that it is the compulsive nature of texting, rather than sheer frequency that is problematic,” lead researcher Kelly M. Lister-Landman, PhD, a professor at Delaware Community College, said in an APA news release. “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,” she explained.

According to a 2012 Pew Internet and American Life Project Study, teens send and receive an average of 167 texts a day. The same study found that 63 percent of teens said they texted on a daily basis, while only 39 percent used their cell phones for voice calls, making texting their preferred method of communication.

For the current study, Lister-Landman and her colleagues surveyed 211 girls and 192 boys in grades eight and 11 from schools in a semi-rural town in the Midwest. The teens answered questions about how occupied they were with texting, if they ever tried to hide their texting from others, how they were doing academically and how well adjusted they were in school.

For assessment purposes, the research team created a “Compulsive Texting Scale” (CTS) to measure how much texting affected academic performance. Study results revealed only the girls showed a negative association between compulsive texting and school performance, including grades, school bonding and feeling academically competent.

The findings also showed that girls do not text more frequently than boys do, but that they appear to text for different reasons. Whereas boys text primarily to convey information, girls use texting for social interaction and to nurture relationships.

“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,” Lister-Landman explained in the news release.

Acknowledging that their study was limited by the teens’ self-reported information, the researchers indicated further research was in order. “It would be interesting to study adolescents’ motivation for texting as well as the impact of multitasking on academic performance,” Lister-Landman said.

For parents who are concerned that their teenage daughter may be a compulsive texter, signs to look for include, checking texts before doing anything else, becoming frustrated when unable to text, being defensive or secretive about texting, and losing sleep because of late-night texting.