Texting Harms Children's Language and Grammar Skills

Nowadays, texting has emerged as the first option of communication among the young generation.  In texting, the use of homophones or avoiding unnecessary letters and initials to form a message are very common. Recent research shows that the trend can leave a negative effect on the learning process of the children.

Popularity of text messaging among tweens can have a negative impact on their learning skills, particularly language and grammar, the new study warns.

Tweens using techspeak or language adaptations as an easy method to communicate with friends and family were found performing poorly on grammar tests and having confusion between techspeak and normal rules of grammar.

"They may use a homophone, such as gr8 for great, or an initial, like, LOL for laugh out loud. An example of an omission that tweens use when texting is spelling the word would, w-u-d," Drew Cingel, a doctoral candidate in media, technology and society, Northwestern University, said in a statement.

To prove their theory, the investigators conducted a grammar assessment test, based on a ninth-grade grammar review, for middle school students in a central Pennsylvania school district.

Later the participants were interviewed about their texting habit. Investigators noted down details about the number of texts, both sent and received and the number of adaptations the students used in their last three texts.

Based on the 228 completed questionnaires, investigators found texting harming the children's learning process.

"Overall, there is evidence of a decline in grammar scores based on the number of adaptations in sent text messages, controlling for age and grade," Cingel said.

However, certain punctuation and sentence structure shortcuts, like not capitalizing the first letter and putting a full stop at the end of a sentence, had little impact on the test.

Investigators also found parents playing a major role in influencing their children to use shortcuts in their texts.

"In other words, if you send your kid a lot of texts with word adaptations, then he or she will probably imitate it," said S. Shyam Sundar, Professor of Communications and co-director of the Penn State's Media Effects Research Laboratory. "These adaptations could affect their off-line language skills that are important to language development and grammar skills, as well."

Modern technology, like small screens on mobile devices may be influencing the language short cuts, researchers say.

"There is no question that technology is allowing more self-expression, as well as different forms of expression," Shyam Sundar, explained. "Cultures built around new technology can also lead to compromises of expression and these restrictions can become the norm."

The findings of the study have been published in New Media & Society.