A national epidemic of a disorder known as textual harassment has hit hard in the teen population of Amador County.

A local care-providing organization reports that "many" of its young clients, largely girls, have told of feeling controlled or abused via the text-message function on a cell phone. Jackson's Operation Care went so far as to underwrite a quarter-page ad in the Ledger Dispatch on the subject. Offering a telephone hotline number, the ad quotes research conducted nationally by the TRU firm.

"One in three teens say they are text-messaged 10, 20 or 30 times an hour by a partner inquiring where they are, what they're doing or who they're with," the firm's study found.

Operation Care's executive director Lynn Shield said, "In reports from clients, many times I've heard, 'I can't go anywhere without him tracking me down.' People with cell phones are expected to be on demand. People with controlling behavior use that."

As it emerges prominently in Amador, the obsessive use of text-message access to shower people with invasive questions, propositions, admonitions and even threats is hitting a tipping point elsewhere in the U.S. Nevada's pending legislation could make it the fourth western state to add text messaging to a legal definition of stalking. And, widespread textual harassment jumped out at federal Department of Justice researchers in a study released in February on the national social issue of stalking.

"The most common type of stalking behavior victims experienced was unwanted phone calls and messages," DOJ officials announced.

"It's a behavior you see more and more," said Peter Picard, vice president of the TRU research firm. "Teens are more and more comfortable with technology, but it doesn't mean their judgment has caught up with their technical skills."

In the medical world, too, textual harassment has become a research target for mental-health professionals already concerned with Internet addiction.

"Nationally, more than 75 billion text messages are sent a month, and the most avid texters are 13 to 17," Dr. Jerald Block quoted researchers in a March 2008 article in the American Journal of Psychiatry. "Teens with cell phones average 2,272 text messages a month, compared with 203 calls."

Block and other psychiatrists regard obsessive text messaging as a variety of Internet addiction.

"Attempts to measure the phenomenon are clouded by shame, denial, and minimization," Block wrote.

Picard said, "Obsession with texting needs to be monitored. Teens have no other experience to measure it against. They grew up with it."

Picard said it's fair to regard the current texting obsession as a kind of societal disorder as well as a personal character disorder.

"It does seem a little unbalanced," he said. "Technology has rushed onto the scene. Adults have patterns of experience that are barriers against it. Teens drink from the fire hose."

Technological developments, "along with their many benefits, bring with them ever greater potential for abuse," a 2008 New York's Kings County Court decision found.

"Notably, teens are typically not telling their parents about this tech abuse in their dating relationships," the firm found. "The result is that a disturbing knowledge gap has opened between the frequency of abusive tech behavior parents are aware of and what is really going on in teens' lives. Given this gap, it is perhaps not surprising that parents are not doing very much to intercede in their teens' lives with regard to tech use and abuse in dating relationships. This leaves many teens in a highly vulnerable position, without a primary source of personal support and guidance."