Teen Texting Ruining The English Language

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Recommended: Text messaging affects teen literacy

In June of 2008 Americans sent about 75 billion text messages; that’s more than the amount sent in June 2005 by about 67.8 billion text messages (Meanley). Most people think texting is not bad for our language, but that it has simply broadened our language styles. If people were to actually to think about the teen education and look at the research that has been done, people would realize that texting is not helping the teens by abbreviating certain words to make typing easier, and using incorrect punctuation to show greater emotion. Teen texting is ruining the English language for teens and other generations. In order to better our language texting must be minimized. Teen texting is affecting our language usage and writing.
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Parents have recently discovered that their children have been talking differently at home, with friends, at grandparents' or family gatherings (Kennedy). These changes noticed, are not what they would like to see in particular, most parents do not like the "slang" words they are using, most parents have told their kids they would like to talk and act respectfully to their grandparents. Teachers are also saying that texting is negatively affecting their students' writing skills. There are ways to say certain things without always using an abbreviation. One easy way is just to continue writing out the words and saying before, by the way, or complete waste of time, instead of b4, btw, cwof (Vosloo). Texting language is showing up in students' papers and other writing assignments and needs to be addressed, some schools are becoming very strict on "texting slang" in the papers. Teachers are trying to explain to their students' that there are appropriate and inappropriate times to use texting language in our writing. Researches say banning texting language in writing is not a good choice, instead just limit the use of it do certain audiences and let the students know there is an appropriate audience and time to use this language (Vosloo). Teachers should educate the students on the appropriate audience for this language. Many ways of bettering our language are still being discovered, …show more content…

Teens are beginning to acquire very bad writing skills, little to no depth in writing, horrible grammar skill and using more abbreviations than ever. Even though students are writing more than before their skills are terrible. To the teen language, texting has been horrific to the students formal writing skills (Bivens-Tatum). The lack of character usage in text messages is continually making teens change their formal writing into styles to fit the character count of the messages (Bivens-Tatum). Teen texting often uses slang, which can translate over into other writing. This slang brings incomplete sentences, abbreviations, and incorrect spelling and usage of words ("Scholastic Action"). Studies have shown that teens do worse on grammar tests or assignments if they have just sent a text message. Studies have also shown that many teens have been using "texting language" in the classroom ("Scholastic Action"). Some teens have admitted to being addicted to texting, which in return have made them accustomed to using the text messaging language more often (Meanley). Texting has been becoming our main way of communication with others. The reason for texting language becoming so popular with teens and many adults is that it is very convenient for people to use. Texting is allowing people to shy away from using the correct English language. The amount of phone calls to

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