Monday, December 03, 2012
Texting and communication skills
How
Texting affects communication skills
By # 10088397 COMS 369-L02
Today’s youth have grown up with mobile devices and the
ability to text message as a common way to communicate with their friends and
family. The Short Message Service (SMS)
texts are sent by billions of people all around the world every day. It has become the predominant form of
communication for many people who now prefer texting to actually calling people
on the phone. With an impersonal form of
communication now dominating the way some people, particularly youth, prefer to
communicate it affects their style of writing.
This is as a result of the fact that they rely on the use of short hand
and abbreviations in texts. I believe this has a negative effect on communication
skills, writing and grammar.
In my own experience I have found many cases where my grammar
has suffered because of the quick and easy habits I have formed from my avid
use of text messaging. I am not saying that my frequent texting is solely
responsible for this but I believe that it is definitely is a contributing
factor. Little grammatical errors such as removing the
apostrophes (cant, wont, Ill etc.) as well as improper capitalizations are
common in texting but if and when these habits are carried on into academic
writing it can be detrimental to your grades; something I have had to learn the
hard way during my university studies. Another common bad habit developed from
texting is abbreviating words and acronyms; it is known as the short hand
vocabulary. Some examples include ‘LOL’,
‘BTW’, ‘TTYL’ as well as eliminating letters from words e.g, ‘hav’, ‘wat’, and ‘thx’. All of
these bad habits contribute to poor written communication skills.
Texting effects verbal communication, in particular interpersonal
communication. While it may appear to be beneficial to those who are shy and
introverted, it enables them to stay that way and doesn’t push them out of
their comfort zone. I believe that having
the ability to send almost any type of message through text message has led to
a decline in the number of phone calls people make. Without developing the common courtesies of phone
or interpersonal communication a lack of confidence arises when a phone call is
necessary because others are not comfortable or adept at impersonal form of
communicating. Texting also affects
person to person interactions. It allows introverts to avoid any emotion and is
easy for all to spend time thinking and even rewriting what they want to say. In contrast personal face to face
communication or telephone communication bring the reality that once something
is said it is out there you cannot change or edit it. This is an added pressure that can make
people extremely nervous. If society
didn’t rely so heavily on these non personal forms of communication like
texting as well as email and instant messaging (IM) there would be no choice
but to make phone calls or talk in person to get a message delivered. Introverts would be forced to come out from
their shell and I believe they would develop greater self-confidence.
The main age group of texters is teenagers aged 13 to 17(Nielson,
2012) which I believe creates concern for the future of our society’s
communication skills. Our future will
rely on a generation whose predominant writing skills come from quick
shorthanded, abbreviation dominated, and ungrammatically correct written messages. I accept that it is not appropriate to
generalize this to all avid texters but I feel that the majority of students,
even at the post secondary level, suffer from weak writing and this definitely
adds evidence to my point that texting is producing poor written communication
skills. Many go further to ask “….If
this is what we are teaching our youth what will the next generation look like?”
Will it become socially accepted for people to use text language and poor
grammar in all writing? My view is that this will lead to a decline in future
generation’s communication skill. I find
this quite ironic because we owe this decline to advancements in information
communication technologies (ICT).
As texting becomes
more prominent in the daily life of this generation, a dependency upon our
mobile phones develops. This dependency
can be seen as having a negative impact on interpersonal communication skills;
particularly in group settings. Whenever
I am with my parents or other members of the older generation I find that if I
am on my phone they deem my behavior as rude. Communicating via text is not as
common or as understood for their generation and they have trouble
understanding it or accepting it. This
is different to a gathering of my similar aged friends where it is not unusual
that we are all likely to be on our phones most of the time, and may even
communicate with people over text rather than actually speaking to each other. I view this dependency we have developed on
our mobile phones as a crutch. It
suggests we have developed a lack of attention to the here and now and a sense
of urgency to see what is going on with people other than those that are there
with us. For some people there behavior
is so extreme it suggests they lack interest in the present and have mixed up their
priorities.
I realize that we can never undo the effect of technology and
erase cell phones or stop texting, but I do believe we can play a more active
role in not letting it affect our communication skills. I ask you to try and make an extra effort the
next time you send a text, to ensure that it is grammatically correct. Ask yourself how many shorthanded or
abbreviated words you used? Ask yourself
if it would be more appropriate to actually talk to the person – even if it
means an extra effort on your part. I
feel that if we incorporate more consideration to our messages we can
counteract the negative effect texting has on our communication skills.
References
Nielson Group,. (2012) U.S Teen Mobile Account: Calling
Yesterday, Texting Today, Apps Tomorrow. Nielson Wire. Retrieved November 28 from http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/u-s-teen-mobile-report-calling-yesterday- texting-today-using-apps-tomorrow/
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