With the modern trends of technology nowadays, children are prone to harmful effects that gadgetry brings. About 60 to 70% of kids around the world ages 10-17 years old are hooked up to cellular phones. They spend up to 5 or more hours calling, sending texts or just playing.
Ma. Sheila Escuro(2009) says that, “Usage of this gadget can be controllable. Its up to the parents to teach their child to be responsible on their mobile phones, to ask them to pay-up when their mobile runs out of money. Or to get some agreement from the mobile companies that automatically cut-off usage when the child overuses their allowance for the month.”
Here in our country, negative effects of the electronic gadgets are common. Parents tend to be troubled on how it changed their children, in mental and social aspects. Instead of good effects on them, they become addictive to it and affect their academic performances.
The Philippines could be the “texting capital of the world”, with reportedly 50 million text messages sent out every day (Breakthrough, DLSU). Even the crippled Philippine economy got a boost from text messaging especially its influence to the teens. Text messaging is most popular among teens and to the college students. Because of its popularity in this age group, it has sprawned a new term the “GenTxt” or text generation.
Part of text messaging appeal to Filipinos probably has to do with the fact that it feeds a pre-existing cultural urge, namely to rumor monger. Text messaging enables a closw-knit and factional society to share information immediately. The power of text messaging to disseminate effect. Thus, there is no reason to think that the flow of disingenuous texts will become less rabid now in the most volatile of seasons. (Garrido, 2004)
According to Vanzi, S.J., “It can be implied that the students performance in terms of their language skills or competencies is independent or not related at all to the fact that they own cellular phones. “(Philippine Headline News Online, 2002).