Effects Of Technology On Teen Literacy

Kate Hafner’s article, “Texting May Be Taking a Toll” claims that texting is an issue to teenagers around the world. As an illustration, Hafner starts the article by identifying that teenagers send a drastic amount of texts in their everyday lives. according to the Nielsen Company, “American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008”(1). This is just one of the examples of many that portrays teenagers around the world send many text messages. Along with teenagers sending many texts a day, hafner also shows in this article that texting is affecting teenager's life in many different ways for example, preventing teenagers' way of becoming independent. Just as professor Turkle presented,

In Michaela Cullington’s essay titled, “Does Texting Affect Writing?” the author tests the ongoing question of how today’s youth handles the effects of texting in the education system. Using successful evidence from both sides of the argument as well as participating in her own experiment, Cullington is able to fully demonstrate how texting does not interfere with today’s students and their abilities to write formally in the classroom.

Although her study supports the hypothesis that texting and writing have no relationship to one another, Cullington (and the researchers whose work she analyzed) recognizes the significance of new technology and society’s evolving modes of communication. She writes, “The use of text mes- saging as a common means of communication is becoming increasingly popular; therefore, this issue should continue to be examined” (94). Not surprisingly, the popularity of texting has increased since the time of Cullington’s article and so too has research on its effect on student writ- ing. What Cullington may not have anticipated, however, are the ways in which texting itself has changed. How might innovations such as Internet access, various “apps,” and software advance- ments have changed texting in the mere two years since Michaela Cullington published her article in 2011?

The first mobile phones, due to its “smaller” size, would still be considered very large in today’s world. Many of the early cell phones were considered “car phones” because they were shaped like a brick and could not fit into one's pocket. The first cell phone was called the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x and was commercially available in 1983. The cellular technology to call these phones was analog frequencies. In the early 2000’s, cell phones became smaller is size and the software got faster. The introduction of the Blackberry popularized the use of the technology allowing more and more people to be involved. Cell phones became popular with the introduction of text messaging, short messages that can be sent to another person. Texting has become an easier and quicker form of communicating with others. Teenagers and children grew to love this feature as a main form of communication. They took on this mainly because it is very private and did not have to be loud in a situation that was not appropriate. “Today’s teens will carry the technology with them as a part of their repertoire of communication possibilities. Where older generations, when

We as a society are evolving with each generation to come. We are getting stronger, faster, and smarter. Just as cell phones are no longer square blocks with numbers on them and TV’s are not in black and white, writing itself has also evolved. Once upon a time many wrote and spoke in a Shakespearean form of language and over the years it has evolved into something we call modern English. In recent years, technology has advanced greatly and cell phones have become one of our primary use of communication. With cell phones came a new form of writing called text messaging. Text messaging is used to send short, concise messages to anyone around the world. Often times text messages involve the use of abbreviations which stand for different things and also involves frequent use of emoji’s as a form of expression. This form of writing is now considered informal writing and is not acceptable in academic settings. In Michaela Cullington’s essay “Does Texting Affect Writing?” she touches on both sides of whether texting is hindering students writing or if it’s actually having a positive effect. She then makes is clear that she believes most students are educated enough to know when text speak is appropriate and when it’s not so therefore it has no effect on students. Although, I agree with her thesis, she lacks credibility due to her insufficient evidence. In addition, I also believe

We carry our cellphones with us at all times, and with all this online connection, you would think that stepping back and disconnecting is a huge achievement. But this is a new way of life. Nathan Jurgenson, in his article “The IRL Fetish” says, “We have come to understand more and more of our lives through the logic of digital connection. Social media is more than something we log onto; it’s something we carry within us. We can’t log off.”. He explains how we are so deeply connected with technology that it is nearly impossible to stay ‘old-fashioned’. We are learning to accept technological advancements because they are inevitable. In other words, to adapt to this new form of literacy is much easier than avoiding it. In recognition that texting truly is literacy, one English teacher had her students put excerpts of Richard III into “text speak” to show that they fully understand the material. Educators are embracing texting as a new form of learning because it clearly is not going away. Students enjoy texting as a way to escape reality and fail to recognize the literary benefits. Texting will continue to encourage students to read and write as well as improve spelling with phonological

Almost a generation of teens have access to a phone with text messages. They spend so much time shorting words, they lose the ability to be literate. Teenagers today are more worried about their phones, in school or out of school, causing them to drop their grades and get them in lots of trouble.

Years of research show that texting is leading to an increase in social awkwardness in teens and children. “Nini Halkett has taught history there for two decades. As her students are increasingly immersed in texting, Halkett also finds them increasingly shy and awkward in person.” (Jennifer Ludden’s article “Teen Texting Soars; Will Social Skills Suffer?” paragraph 14). With a majority of teens feeling more at ease texting each other, this can and will lead to

“Does Texting Affect Writing” is about Michaela Cullington, the author, comparing two opposing perspectives. The perspective is whether texting hinders the formal writing skills of students or not. Millennials are a population that cannot go a day without looking at their phones so, due to the “increasing use of mobile phones, concerns have been raised about its influence on their literacy skills. No matter if it is sending or receiving a text or checking social media sites, technology has taken over the lives of the young generations. The essay “Does Texting Affect Writing?” in They Say, I say exposes how the significant action of texting and using textspeak, i.e. abbreviations and symbols, may be hindering the writing skills of teenaged students. People communicate using textese to “more quickly type what they are trying to say” (Cullington, 2017, p. 361). Textese is a “register that allows omission of words and the use or textisms: instances of non-standard written language such as 4ever” (Van Dijk, 2016). When these people use textese often, it can become habitual and transition into their school assignments. Michaela Cullington constantly repeats words and uses comparisons and abnormalities for the concerns about textspeak, the responses to the concerns, methods and the discussion of findings on the topic to be analyzed.

In recent discussion of, “Does Texting Affects Writing” by Michaela Cullington, one view is that texting has a negative impact on teens and their writing. Cullington shows both sides of what students, teachers, and professors have to say about the issue of texting; yet after research this belief may not prove to be true. Then she writes about personal experience regarding the issue.

Thesis statement: In this paper, I will discuss how the frequent use of text messaging by teens today negatively affects literacy and I will offer suggestions that parents and teachers can implement and teach in order to raise reading, writing, and vocabulary skills.

The focus of my essay is to talk about how text messaging is affecting literacy in teenagers. In my paper I am going to include some background on text messaging and how in the recent years it has affected the education of many students. I will include statists from various professors who have written books or conducted studies that will support my topic.

Many will argue that children and teens especially will not know when to use “textisms,” and that texting is only a distraction to learning. That they cannot differentiate between the important messages where formality is key, and the times where they are not being judged or critiqued on every spelling and grammar mistake. This is a common misconception, as a 2006 study by two professors at Coventry University in Britain found that teen students seem to switch easily between text messaging and Standard English. This is most likely because that generation was not introduced to texting speak while they were learning the English language taught in pre school and elementary school. Although

The article presents the problem with communication with lots of research that has been done in past years. The research data presented was mostly accurate throughout the essay. Another article written by Angle, Moscaritolo state that, “teens sends and receive 60 texts message a day, up from 50 in 2009…” so as the years go by there has been an increase in the use of smartphones. We can be in a family meeting, but more often will find out that teens prefer to “talk” to you by text than having face-to-face

With mobile phones where the small screen technology is so constraining, texting and tweeting plays a significant role in how we conduct our daily communication. David Crystal wrote an article titled “Texting”, and believes the younger generation is introducing a new phase of texting where words are usually represented with acronyms (241). Crystal called this abbreviated text exchange a “textspeak” (243). Kris Axtman is also a prominent author who wrote an article, “R U Online? The Evolving Lexicon of Wired Teens” (247). His article focuses on teenagers and their dependency on the online technology. Axtman observes that teenagers develop a whole range of abbreviations while exchanging