Preview

The Effects of Text Messaging on Teen Literacy

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
783 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Effects of Text Messaging on Teen Literacy
Text messaging can affect a person’s social skills, writing skills, driving skills. The money that people spend on phones and texting can cause financial hardship. Text messaging has begun to have a detrimental effect on people’s writing skills. They use inventive spelling and abbreviations. As most teenagers get used to short texting, some of their grades dropped to the spelling errors they make. So many teens get used to wing abbreviation that they write that way. Teenager’s writing skills have turned into sentence fragments because of the limited space that they put texts into sentence. “Among the 64 percent of students who say they incorporated text language in their writing, 25 percent said they did so to convey emotion and 38 percent said they have used text shortcuts A lot of students’ vocabulary and grammar is also affecting their literacy.”(How is text messaging affecting teen literacy?) The outlook of the teachers is that “The same Pew study, which included 800 teens from around the United States, said 64 percent of teens with cell phones have texted in class. Text Plus recently released results of its own survey of 1,214 teens that use its service, 43 percent of which have texted in class” (Is your teen texting in class). They seem to pay more attention to their phone than what the teacher is teaching. They seem to have the phones that will spell the word for them so they don’t have to worry about spelling. So when they at school they really don’t know how to spell in real life are hard for some teens. Text messaging is a method that is adapted to teenager’s social skills. Most teen’s relationships’ are put to an end with the help of texts. Teens seem to break up with their girlfriend or boyfriend with just a text message. More teenagers seem to spend more time texting than to hanging out there their friends and family. It even can prevent introverted people becoming confident. They may seem to think that things are just fine when they are not

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    In “Does Texting Affect Writing?” author Michaela Cullington talks about the negative and the positive side on the effects of texting. In my own personal opinion I think that texting effects my life in a positive way rather than negative. In the article she says that texting “helps students spark creativity” and “texting teens learn how convey their message to the reader in as few words as possible”. Cullington also argues the point saying “25% of high schoolers are ‘proficient’ writers” blaming texting for this.…

    • 548 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    As stated in the article, “2b or Not 2b” by David Crystal, some people believe that texting is not a natural form of communication and that it is wrecking our language. Although some people may agree with this idea, studies have challenged this opinion. Rather than fearing the consequences of texting, people should embrace this evolution and understand that this new form of communication may actually have benefits on literacy. This author once stated, “there is no evidence that texting teaches people to spell badly: rather, research shows that those kids who text frequently are more likely to be the most literate and the best spellers, because you have to know how to manipulate language.” The moral panic created by this form of socialization should be diminished, as people have the power and ability to shape our future.…

    • 1365 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Texting helps us communicate with family, friends, or co-workers to get an idea through or a time to go to the mall or just saying that you're going to the person's house. On the other hand texting could be bad, in “Text-Speak Is Harming Teens’ Writing Skills”, it says that 13 year olds through 17 year olds sometimes use slang like LOL or UR2K meaning laugh out loud or you are to kind.…

    • 169 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Michaela Cullinton used evidences from sources like USA Today, Jacquie Ream and Naomi Baron whom all agree that texting has a negative affect on academic writing. Jacquie Ream was a teacher and author of K.I.S.S.-Keep it Short and Simple. In this book she wrote, “We have a whole generation being raised without communication skills.” I agree with Ream, our generation does not use the same communication that we used in past centuries. People of all age know what a text message, email, or…

    • 700 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the article “Texting, the Next Epidemic” by William B. Bradford, he addresses the issue of texting in our society. He states that texting is starting to tear apart the social fabric of our country. In the article, Bradford states that the United States has fallen behind in educational standards due to the lack of reading and writing involved with texting. He portrays to his readers that texting is making our social events not so social. He says that people go to restaurants and parties for social interaction just end up on their phones not talking to each other. Furthermore, he talks about how texting is creating a generation that is socially awkward and cannot read or write important papers or documents. Proving his point on whether the next generation will be able to govern our country without being able to think, speak, or write clearly.…

    • 494 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In her essay “Does Texting Affect Writing?” Michaela Cullington addresses the issue of text messaging possible causing poor communication skills and the use of textspeak, abbreviations used during text messaging such as “LOL” and “g2g,” in students’ formal writing. Cullington argues that text messaging does not have an effect on students’ formal writing. She addresses the opposition directly, even citing credible sources. However, she also cites credible sources with better information to support her point, and even conducts an experiment of her own. All of these factors combine and work well together to form a well-executed argument within Cullington’s essay.…

    • 938 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Text messaging is the central structure of communication for teennagers. While teens may think shortcuts are helpful they may not understand the damage they are doing to their writing. While older generations consider it to be degrading to the English Language, over half of teens have come to the conclusion that texting has made their writing inapplicable. Although to some teens, shortcuts and proper English can still be effective. Researchers show that text messaging has been proven to have a negative effect on society, and to the English Language.…

    • 1684 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cellular devices and other technology has grown to be extremely popular. With this popularity technology has pervaded our lives and changed social interaction. Text messaging also known as texting is when people with cell phones send short typed messages. The rate of Americans sending text messages drastically increased year by year. Teenagers are large contributors to the presence of text messaging in society. The majority of the people into the texting frenzy are usually between 13 and 17 years old. In this paper we will discuss both the pros and cons of texting.…

    • 528 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the article “No, kids CAN’T study while they’re texting: Research finds teenagers struggle with multitasking” by Jenny Awford states, “But new research… by Stanford University, found that 85% of young people struggle to perform simple tasks when distracted by music, phones, or email.” While doing simple tasks, it seems that young adults are distracted by technology and this why because their attention is suddenly captured by a text or notification of Facebook,Snapchat, Instagram etc. In the article, “Teen Texting Soars: Will Social Skills Suffer” by Jennifer Ludden notes, “58% of students with mobile phones say they’ve sent a text message during class.” The article clearly states that students during class are easily distracted by their phones, this of course could affect them in their grades because they missed what was being thought,showing that technology is a negative influence on…

    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cons of Texting

    • 1077 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Technology has came a long way and will continue to improve and explore unknown territories. One of the new things discovered is texting and while texting is helpful it has a lot of disadvantages and downfalls. If texting could be listed as a skill, many of my friends would qualify as highly skilled in that area. I am glued to my phone and always texting so I know firsthand just how much texting can be abused and its less than helpful qualities. Texting kills some good old fashioned phone call conversations, face time, and is making annoying phrases part of everyday talking; texting is an obsession for many people and is doing more damage than most people know by damaging people’s people skills.…

    • 1077 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    What are the some of the effects that texting is having on the teen literacy? Text messaging has increased in popularity ever since the very first text message that was sent in the year of 1933 by a student who was working for the Nokia Corporation (Druoin and Davis 49). Centre of Science Education at Sheffield University discovered that more than ninety percent of the youth have cell phones and ninety-six percent of them use them to text. (Plester, Wood, Bell 137). The establishment of cell phones and texting has made a huge encounter on the way people communicate. Most people use their cell phones to text more than they do to make phone calls. Teenagers have observed that an average teenager sends a hundred textsin a day and 3,033 in s month. (Cingel and Sundar 310). Teens have the highest numbers of sent texts and the number is rapidly going up. Studies have shown that this form of communication is destroying the way people read,…

    • 1483 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    2006: n. pag. http://www.google.com. Web. 10 Feb. 2011. . Communicating with people helps with our reading and writing skills. According to this article, texting actually helps people who struggle with reading because they are forced to read and understand texting when communication with people daily. Eventually everything dealing with learning will always have technology related. Going from abbreviating words in a text message to writing out words in essays for school is something teenagers can easily be comfortable with doing. When you are texting about something more serious it seems that everything is written out more than it is abbreviated. It all comes down to the situation whether or not it causes teenagers to be…

    • 782 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cullington points out some of the arguments that were made by those who believe that texting has detrimental affects on its writers. Some of the arguments that Cullington writes in her article are some statistics such as, “...according to the National Center for Education Statistics, only 25% of high school students are ‘proficient’ writers”(362), which implies that since teenagers are a large group of heavy texters, their writing is directly negatively affected by texting. Although there are only a small group of students who fall under the category of a proficient writer, texting is not the sole factor that contributes to the “poor skills” students are given. Some factors can be poor educational system or higher standards raised by those who create proficiency tests. Some other factors that give texting a bad reputation is the lack of punctuation included in texting. Cullington makes a statement that, “Many also complain that because texting does not stress the importance of punctuation, students neglect it in their formal writing”(363). Many people believe that since texting does not usually include punctuation due to its causal connotation, it will show in their formal writing. Through multiple experiences with friends and students, it is obvious when it is time to take the idea of texting out and begin writing a professional paper. With all the reasons why texting…

    • 1016 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Texting and Writing

    • 474 Words
    • 2 Pages

    According to research done by Michaela Cullington in “Does Texting affect writing?” texting does not affect writing. She surveyed seven different students and two high school teachers about their opinions on writing. From her research she concluded that people recognize the differences between texting friends and writing formally and know what is appropriate in each situation. Although some teachers disagree with this, Cullington can confidently state that texting has no effect on students writing in general. (Cullington, 87-95)…

    • 474 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Texting Affecting Teens

    • 923 Words
    • 4 Pages

    “ My cellphone is my best friend. It’s my lifeline to the outside world” (Underwood). The world of technology has changed dramatically in the last decade. People have taken texting to the extreme. The advances in the cell phones have had a large impact on everyone, but especially today's youth. Teens have taken the use of technology to an unsafe level. These bad habits can affect them for the rest of their lives. Teens are to distracted by their cell phones. Texting is causing teens to be distracted while driving, limiting their social skills and is causing teen texting tendonitis.…

    • 923 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays