How Texting is Making the Teens Stupider

Might I say, before starting my rant, that I absolutely love Korean music. Even if I cannot understand it much. Anyways, back on topic.

Texting. It has become a worldwide phenomenon. So many people text now, that I would say it is the most used form of communication, mayhaps besides email. So why did I think it is making people stupider? Do not get me started. Oh wait, you want to hear my opinion. Here goes.

Texting itself is not the problem. I find it an extremely useful tool in contacting my friends that I would otherwise have to spend long-distance fees upon. (Not that they are not worth it.) Texting is actually a pretty great form of communication. It is the way people text that is the biggest problem.

Me, I usually do not use contractions and always use correct punctuation, capitalization, and grammar when texting. Most other people do not. And that is what the problem is. When I see a text message like this: i totaly wnt ppl 2 eat mre lnch cz it is awsme, I vomit. Literally. That is possibly the hardest thing in the world to read, and it makes my eyes bleed. Almost all the vowels are omitted, so the message is just merely a shell of its possible glory.

Now why are these shortened phrases so bad? To begin with, they lose the distinction between very similar words. For example, "there", "their", and "they're" are often shortened or just intermeshed regardless of actual grammatical meaning. So a phrase like "I eat there " could easily be misinterpreted. This creates all kinds of confusion and just furthers the possible wrong applications of the word.

Grammar saves lives. To show you why, here is another example:

"Let's eat, grandpa."
"Let's eat grandpa."

One implies consuming food with a grandfather, the other implies consuming a grandfather. So people miss this fact, and I know that I have, for one, started eating someone because of not understanding the meaning of a text.

So all these misinterpretations and errors lead to young adults misunderstanding the meaning of a word. And these shortforms are allowing teens to almost form their own language. They end of using some words differently then they should and create a set of rules that goes against the current laws of correct writing. So if I end up seeing a student's essay when I am a professor, and it contains any shortforms, I will instantly fail them.

I am sure my thoughts are somewhat all over the place in the post, but if any grammar Nazis come and correct me, I will find you and that comment may be the last you ever make.

-AFR