What are some of the effects that texting is having on the teen literacy? That is the question that the researcher explores in this paper. The researcher tackles about the impacts that texting is making on teenagers, the impacts that making the teenagers’ language and writing skills nowadays.
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of typing and sending a brief, electronic message between two or more mobile phones or fixed or portable devices over a phone network according to. The term originally referred to messages sent using the Short Message Service or SMS; it has grown to include messages containing image, video, and sound content, known as MMS messages.With the revolutionary new forms of communication that technology has introduced comes a debate on what effect these new digital mediums have on literacy. In the age of text messaging, where words are reduced to nonstandard abbreviations and symbols, many people question the future of literacy especially to teenagers. There is no arguing that teenagers nowadays text more than ever. The majority of population claims that the short hand and abbreviated characteristics of text messaging are making teenagers lazy, not forcing them to use the proper grammar and spelling that teenagers learn in school. Considering the popularity of text messaging to teenagers, it is believed that this type of communication is destroying the way people read, think and write. Text messaging was even preferred by some as “The Dumbest Generation”.
One study (Hogan et al., 2012) states that cell phones are becoming a necessity this modern day, to the point where every teenager and adult must have at least one. Individuals are rapidly depending to these devices for communication purposes.
Most new technologies such as text messaging emerge on the social and academic scene. Many people are cautious and untrusting of new technologies that they worry about the riff it could cause in the talk of literacy. It is important for academics to embrace the importance of bringing daily literacies used by younger generations to engage them more critically in the talk of language and technology. (Thurlow, 2006)The objective of this study is to aware and educate the readers on the possible effects of text messaging to individual’s literacy, especially to teenagers. This study also aims to educate readers on how to control and minimize teenagers’ text messaging addiction. Through reading this study, readers will have knowledge on how text messaging affects the literacy of a teenager.
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