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In another study on the impact of texting on language skills, Joan Lee at the University of Calgary conducted a study for her Master’s thesis in linguistics, which showed that those who texted more were less open to new vocabulary, whereas those who read traditional media were more open to expanding their vocabulary. “Our assumption about texting is that it encourages unconstrained language,” Lee argues, “but the study found this to be a myth.” Lee contends that reading traditional print media exposes people to variety and creativity in language that is not found in colloquial peer-to-peer text messaging predominantly used among youth

College students who frequently text message during class have difficulty staying attentive to classroom lectures and consequently are at risk of having poor results, according to a study by Fan-Yi Flora Wei, Ken Wang and Michael Klausner at the University of Pittsburgh, published in the journal Communication Education. They concluded that most college students believe they are capable of performing multitasking behaviors (such as texting) during their classroom learning, but research does not support that proposition.

Laura M. Holson writing in The New York Times cites the research by IDC, a research company in Framington Massachusetts, which claims that as of 2010, 81 percent of Americans ages 5 to 24 own a cellphone. Holson also cites the arguments of Sherry Turkle at MIT who argues that “for kids it [smart phones] has become an identity-shaping and psyche-changing object.”  Holson argues that text messaging has become the younger generation’s version of pig Latin, citing the fact that AT&T offers a tutorial to parents that decodes acronyms meant to keep parents from prying into teens’ private conversations.

According to a Pew Internet and American Life Project entitled “Writing, Technology and Teens,” texting abbreviations and acronyms are now showing up in formal writing. Out of a study of 700 youths aged 12-17, sixty percent don’t consider electronic communications such as messaging to be writing in the formal sense; 63 percent say it has no impact on the writing they do for school, and yet 64 percent report that they inadvertently use some form of shorthand in their formal writing.

Teens generally do not believe that technology negatively influences the quality of their writing, but they do acknowledge that the informal styles of writing that mark the use of these text-based technologies for many teens do occasionally filter into their school work. Overall, nearly two-thirds of teens (64%) say they incorporate some informal styles from their text-based communications into their writing at school. 50% of teens say they sometimes use informal writing styles instead of proper capitalization and punctuation in their school assignments; 38% say they have used text shortcuts in school work such as “LOL” (which stands for “laugh out loud”); 25% have used emoticons (symbols like smiley faces ) in school work. For more information on teens and electronic communication, please see Part 4: Electronic Communication starting on page 21.

Even though teens are heavily embedded in a tech-rich world, they do not believe that communication over the internet or text messaging is writing. The main reason teens use the internet and cell phones is to exploit their communication features.2 3 Yet despite the nearly ubiquitous use of these tools by teens, they see an important distinction between the “writing” they do for school and outside of school for personal reasons, and the “communication” they enjoy via instant messaging, phone text messaging, email and social networking sites.

85% of teens ages 12-17 engage at least occasionally in some form of electronic personal communication, which includes text messaging, sending email or instant messages, or posting comments on social networking sites. 60% of teens do not think of these electronic texts as “writing.”

While the debate about the relationship between e-communication and formal writing is on-going, few have systematically talked to teens to see what they have to say about the state of writing in their lives. Responding to this information gap, the Pew Internet & American Life Project and National Commission on Writing conducted a national telephone survey and focus groups to see what teens and their parents say about the role and impact of technological writing on both in-school and out-of-school writing. The report that follows looks at teens’ basic definition of writing, explores the various kinds of writing they do, seeks their assessment about what impact e-communication has on their writing, and probes for their guidance about how writing instruction might be improved.