Hello there indiscriminate texters! I’m here to offer you a new solution to all of those embarrassing late-night texts that you send to your exes. It’s much better than saying you were drunk, because even that implies some sort of consciousness.

May I present to you, “sleep-texting.”

“It’s just what you’d think it is, it’s texting while asleep,” says Elizabeth Dowdell, nursing professor at Villanova University. “It’s exactly what is sounds like, or really more between that, you know, that area between being asleep and being awake.”

“The phone will beep, they’ll answer the text. They’ll either respond in words or gibberish. (It) can even be inappropriate. Ex-girlfriends contacting ex-boyfriends, saying ‘I miss you. I want to see you.’ The thing that happens, though, is that when they wake up, there’s no memory.”

People have been known to do any number of strange things whilst technically “asleep” or in some sort of strange limbo between asleep and awake. You know, like make a sandwich or murder someone. But sleep-texting?

“Oh, sorry Jesse. I’m sorry I texted you that your new girlfriend looks like Sloth and she gives off a perpetual stink-eye. I don’t even remember it, I was actually sleep-texting.”

Apparently the sleep-texting crisis is being brought on by stress and lack of sleep. So pretty much like every other problem. If you have a sleep-texting problem and want to do something about it, it helps to make your bedroom “technology-free” or at least put your iPhone on the other side of the damn room.

[CBS Philly via UPROXX]

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