Crisis Text Line, a national crisis-intervention hotline, conducts its conversations, most of which are with teens, exclusively by text message. Counselors are trained to use short validating responses that encourage engagement. Why text? Despite its drawbacks in smooth interactivity compared to voice, today’s teens are comfortable with the form, it requires that callers distill the nature of their crisis, and, perhaps surprisingly, it encourages openness. Fred Conrad says that people are “more likely to disclose sensitive information via text messages than in voice interviews.”

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