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Teens' text-messaging habits are legion. They send thousands upon thousands of texts per month, and every once in a while, some unfortunate parents make the headlines when they get a bill in the mail for thousands upon thousands of dollars in texting charges.

The increasing use of text-messaging by teens - and increasingly often, by younger children - has given some people cause for concern. They argue that the abbreviations used in texting are detrimental to literacy development. Spelling, grammar, phrasing - these are all somehow poised to suffer, critics of texting contend, because of the use of shortened words and sentences. Soon, they predict, students' essays will be filled with LOLs and L8Rs.

But a new study from Coventry University finds no evidence that having access to mobile phones harms children's literacy skills. In fact, the research suggests that texting abbreviations or "textisms" may actually aid reading, writing and spelling skills.

The Federal Communications Commission has opened a Notice of Inquiry, seeking public comment on how best to update the nation's 911 services. The FCC wants to expand 911 beyond the phone call for help, bringing advanced communication technologies to the decades old emergency program.

According to the FCC, there are more than 650,000 911 calls made daily, and nearly 70% of those come from mobile devices. However, "right now you can't text 9-1-1," said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, noting that during the Virginia Tech school shootings in 2007, some witnesses tried to text 911 but the texts simply never went through and the messages weren't received by dispatchers.

The mobile social network Brightkite announced back in September that it would be focusing more on its group texting feature, but today the company announced that it will be officially dropping the check-in function altogether from its service. One of the earliest companies in the location-based social network trend, Brightkite calls today's announcement to move away from check-in to focus on messaging "the next stage of our evolution."

While teens are renowned for the frequency with which they text, those in the 18-24 age range are also fairly avid text-messagers. According to data released from Nielsen this fall, that age group sends around 1,630 texts per month - roughly three texts per hour. So it's not terribly surprising that a recent study by two psychology professors at Wilkes University finds that college students text message during class. A 50-minute lecture gives you time to send at least a couple messages, right?

But in the words of the students who took the survey, professors would be "shocked" if they knew how much texting went on in class.

Estimates peg the number of text messages that'll be sent worldwide this year to be around 6.1 trillion, triple the number that were sent in 2007. American teenagers - renowned for ther embrace of text messaging - send and receive on average 3339 texts per month. And although many people, teens included, are moving to smartphones and beginning to embrace mobile apps, text messaging - something that works across phone types - remains the premier tool for mobile messaging.

Arguably this means there's lots of opportunity for innovative services to be built around SMS. And one such startup is TextSlide, a new text-only service that brings together two random people to chat anonymously. It sounds a lot like Chatroulette, with the ability to communicate with strangers and "Next!" someone and move on to another correspondent.

WebWatcher, a company whose business is enabling parents to spy on their child's online activity, including email, instant messaging and website visits, has today launched a new tool for spying on SMS text messages too. WebWatcher Mobile currently only works on BlackBerry smartphones, but Android, Windows Mobile and iPhone versions are in the works now.

"Cell phones," warns the company, "can be a great way for children to keep in touch with family members," but they can also "serve as facilitators for cyberbullying, sexting and other dangerous behaviors."

That claim may be true to a point, but is reading each and every text message the best way to counteract these behaviors? For that matter, should parents be spying on their kids to this extent at all?

Another popular service has made its way from the Apple App Store to the Android Market.

GOGII's textPlus allows for unlimited and multiplayer chat and SMS features. TextPlus allows for ad-supported free and unlimited messaging for Android users. Users can hold instant group text conversations with friends on almost all U.S. carriers, even without a text messaging plan.

A recent study by industry group the Participatory Marketing Network has unearthed some surprising data on Gen Y behavior. Apparently, the members of this young demographic (ages 18-24) would rather give up their social networking accounts before they would abandon their email. Given that this generation is typically viewed as "plugged in" digital natives who don't have any use for email, the study raises many questions. Have the previous reports about Generation Y's disdain for email simply been wrong? Or has Gen Y grown up a bit now and has learned the necessity of the medium?