The success of programs such as Dora the Explorer, Diego, Sesame Park, Between the Lions, Super Why and a large force of other educational cartoons speaks to the growth in a field once dominated by only two or three programs.

If the scientific and psychological research reviewed in this study has demonstrated anything, it's that television, like all forms of entertainment, is healthy in moderation and with some level of supervision.

Further, if parents are particularly careful about program choices, research shows that they may even improve their young child's future literary development.

But the need to save time and energy is by no means the whole story of texting. When we look at some texts, they are linguistically quite complex.

The latest studies (from a team at Coventry University) have found strong positive links between the use of text language and the skills underlying success in standard English in pre-teenage children. The more abbreviations in their messages, the higher they scored on tests of reading and vocabulary. The children who were better at spelling and writing used the most textisms. And the younger they received their first phone, the higher their scores.

Some people dislike texting. Some are bemused by it. But it is merely the latest manifestation of the human ability to be linguistically creative and to adapt language to suit the demands of diverse settings.

We will not see a new generation of adults growing up unable to write proper English. The language as a whole will not decline. In texting what we are seeing, in a small way, is language in evolution.