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Melia Clarke

Professor Flores

English 1201

18 April 2019

The Effects of Frequent Texting Are Not What You Think

The relationship between literacy skills and texting has been a recently debated

topic. Many believe that society has become too dependent on social interactions with

their cell phones rather than actual human engagement and that is affecting their

competence in literacy. A great example of that is when I was a child, I was very

advanced at an early age in my reading skills. I was reading at a fourth grade level in

first grade. I also enjoyed writing very much; story writing and freewriting were my

favorite styles. Eleven years later I now struggle with both. When I read, occasionally I

have trouble comprehending what I just read. I also struggle with writer’s block a lot

when I used to just be able to write and write. I was curious to know if frequent texting is

what caused such a drastic change in my literacy skills. This is an important issue that

everyone needs to know more about. Common effects of low literacy rates in adults can

be poor living conditions, poor education like being a high school dropout, and a lack of

understanding the importance of reading. Even though it would seem that frequent

texting would be a detriment to one's literacy, it has been proven to be false, based on

multiple datas collected, there was no compelling evidence connecting frequent texting
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to declining literacy rates.

Fig. 1. This survey shows the percentage of middle-schoolers feelings towards

frequent texting. About ninety percent of the students believed that communicating over

text had no negative impact on their writing skills, which was eventually proven correct.

In the article “SMS Language: What It Is, and How It’s Affecting Our Literacy and

Lives” according to Sharon Housley, VP of Marketing for NotePage, Inc., text speak

originally began because it was an essential considering the majority of cell phone

users were prohibited to not only character limits per text message, but by pay-per-

message plans. Text speak eventually just became a habit and now remains a popular,

timely way to abbreviate phrases to acronyms.

Research, studies, and statistics gathered by many qualified professionals all

conclude that texting does not have an effect on literacy. To begin, Abbie Grace et al.,

students majoring in Higher Education or Postsecondary Education, created a study

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called “Undergraduates’ Text Messaging Language and Literacy Skills” seeing whether

or not texting affects students literacy skills. The study included one-hundred and fifty

undergraduate students in college from Western Canada and eighty-six students from

South Eastern Australia. The students were asked to record sensible text messages

and to fulfill nonword reading and writing tasks. There was very little compelling

evidence gathered to correlate frequent texting and literacy skills. The research

collected was inconsistent for adverse relationships between adults literacy skills and

texting. The inconsistency in research helps support the claim that texting does not

have an effect on literacy rates, since there is no hard evidence to back it up.

Similarly, there was a study, “Grammatical understanding, literacy and text

messaging in school children and undergraduate students: A concurrent analysis”

created by Clare Wood et al., looking into whether or not text messaging and literacy in

undergraduates and school-age children have a relationship. The study consisted of two

hundred and forty-three undergraduate students and children. The criteria of the

research was grammatical errors made when texting and their achievement on

assessments of verbal and nonverbal grammatical understanding, spelling capability,

and phonological thinking. The results showed that children made more capitalization

and punctuation mistakes while texting than adults did. The research collected also

displayed that adult’s texting mistakes were associated to the awareness of penned

grammar. Overall, the data revealed evidence that children’s texting inaccuracies were

not connected to the comprehension of grammar, however in adults their was little

evidence of a connection between punctuation and capitalization errors during texting.

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Research collected by Chantal N. van Dijk et al., titled “The Influence of Texting

Language on Grammar and Executive Functions in Primary School Children”,

questioned the control texting language has on executive functions and grammar in

elementary school children. The research collected was controlled by a number of

variables. They looked into the correspondents on texting like omission ratio, texting

ratio, and texting frequency. There were many factors involved including their

socioeconomic status or SES (a combination of aspects like ones income, job,

education, place of residence and more), age, digit span, and nonverbal IQ. The

outcome of the experiment declared that the factors of nonverbal IQ, age, SES, and

texting frequency had no compelling affiliation with one another. Looking into children’s

digit spans, they slightly corresponded with grammar and vocabulary skills. There was

however a positive relation between age and texism ratio and age and omission ratio,

which granted support for managing the two variables as separate parts of texting.

With all of the inconclusive data collected it is proof that there were no significant

literacy effects seen in children or adults due to frequent texting. Even with multiple

factors taken into the research there was no solid evidence linking literacy skills to

frequent texting.

There are however professionals that also argue that frequent texting does affect

literacy skills. Ashley Welch, writer for the Health & Wellness, covered “How

Compulsive Texting Affected Teens At School”. Ashley interviewed head researcher

Kelly M. Lister-Landman, PhD, of Delaware County Community College. Lister-

Landman and her coworkers surveyed four hundred and three students grades eight to

eleven. The survey had a scale measuring compulsive texting by asking students
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questions. The survey included questions like, “How often do you check your texts

before doing something else that you need to do?", "How often do you find that you text

longer than you intended?", "How often do you find yourself frustrated because you

want to text but you have to wait?" and "How often do you try to cut down the amount of

time you spend texting and fail?” (4). The results of this research displayed that girls do

not text more often than guys, but they are more prone to be negatively affected

intellectually. After Lister-Landman’s study she stated, "Girls in this developmental

stage also are more likely than boys to ruminate with others, or engage in obsessive,

preoccupied thinking, across contexts.” Lister-Landman continues by stating,

“Therefore, it may be that the nature of the texts girls send and receive is more

distracting, thus interfering with their academic adjustment" (8).

Shirael Pollack, an experienced physical therapist who has devoted her career

to helping children with a wide variety of physical and developmental challenges, was

interviewed on the Howcast channel. Shirael answered her take on how media and

technology are affecting children. Although technology can help with learning letters and

numbers, it is only effective for about ten to twenty minutes a day. When sitting in front

of technology, we are not communicating or interacting with others face to face. Shirael

argues that technology can have a negative impact on a child’s development. A child

learns through experience and observation. Being in front of a cell phone all day can

drastically affect a child’s social, and cognitive skills.

The researchers N. Kemp and C. Bushnell, creators of “Children's Text

Messaging: Abbreviations, Input Methods and Links with Literacy.” collected research

data from a portion of eighty-six children ages ten to twelve. Kemp and Bushnell were
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looking into the effects of text messaging and experience on children’s textism use and

recognition. The children were asked to read and write text messages in basic English

and in text form, and to complete tests in reading, spelling, and non-word reading.

Results concluded that the children took a lot longer and made more mistakes while

reading messages through text than in basic English. Results also concluded that

predictive texters were quicker at reading and writing messages than multi-press

texters, texting experience also increased in writing but not reading. Reading and

spelling scores did not seem to differ much, however more experienced texters seemed

to show evidence for a positive relationship between texting and literacy skills.

In conclusion, studies have shown that texting has little to no effect on literacy

rates. Although it has been proven that there is no correlation between texting and

overall literacy skills, there has however been studies recorded that writing speed could

ultimately improve with more experience in texting. Overall, I realized that texting did not

have an effect on my literacy skills declining, but in reality there were other factors that

have diminished my literacy skills.

Works Cited

Abbie|Kemp, et al. “Undergraduates' Text Messaging Language and Literacy

Skills.” Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Springer. 233 Spring

Street, New York, NY 10013. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-

348-4505; e-Mail: Service-Ny@Springer.com; Web Site:

Http://Www.springerlink.com, 30 Apr. 2014, eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1038893.

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“Does Texting Hurt Grammar?” BizCom in the News, 30 May 2013,

www.bizcominthenews.com/bizcom_in_the_news/2013/05/texting-hurts-

grammar-infographic.html.

“Grammatical Understanding, Literacy and Text Messaging in School Children

and Undergraduate Students: A Concurrent Analysis.” Computers & Education,

Pergamon, 17 Sept. 2013,

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036013151300256X

Housley, Sharon. “SMS Language: What It Is, and How It's Affecting Our Literacy

and Lives.” SMS and Text Messaging Blog, www.notepage.net/learning-

center/sms-language.htm.

Howcast. YouTube, YouTube, 24 Oct. 2013,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSmE1YPhtA8.

van Dijk, Chantal N, et al. “The Influence of Texting Language on Grammar and

Executive Functions in Primary School Children.” PloS One, Public Library of

Science, 31 Mar. 2016, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4816572/.

Welch, Ashley. “How Compulsive Texting Affects Teens at School.” CBS News,

CBS Interactive, 5 Oct. 2015, www.cbsnews.com/news/how-compulsive-texting-

affects-teens-school-performance/.

Kemp, and N.|Bushnell. “Children's Text Messaging: Abbreviations, Input

Methods and Links with Literacy.” Journal of Computer Assisted Learning,

Wiley-Blackwell. 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148. Tel: 800-835-6770; Tel:

781-388-8598; Fax: 781-388-8232; e-Mail: Cs-Journals@Wiley.com; Web Site:

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Http://Www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/, 31 Jan. 2011, eric.ed.gov/?q=texting and

literacy rates&id=EJ927726.