Text messaging has become one of the most popular forms of communication to students of all ages across the nation.
The text messaging trend has become so popular that cell phones and text messaging can be seen in schools as early as the intermediate school age but is seen to be the most popular with tweens and teens because the trend has become such a huge phenomenon during their generation.
According to CTIA, the International Association for the Wireless Telecommunications Industry, Americans are sending 20 billion text messages per month.
Text messaging is most commonly a series of abbreviations and acronyms that people type back and forth using cell phones. These abbreviations and acronyms used in text messaging differ from typical abbreviations and acronyms in the sense that text messaging also includes the use of characters to convey a message.
Mary Muscari, an associate professor in the Decker School of Nursing at Binghamton University and a parenting expert, has written a number of books on the topic of text messaging.
Muscari said technology can be both a blessing and a curse, and today it is almost impossible to find a college or high school student who does not have at least one form of 24/7 communication tool.
Both boys and girls are participating in this text messaging craze she said.
“Conversation is more a female issue and technology is more of a male issue, so text messaging is actually appealing to both genders on different levels,” Muscari said.
On the positive side of text messaging, Muscari said, because more students are working than before, technology and text messaging allows them to stay in touch with friends and family.
“Students can use it to broaden their network of friends by affordably contacting people all over the globe,” she said. “Students even tend to collaborate more on assignments than they did before they had available technological means to do so.”
On the negative said, Muscari said, technology can be no different from most other commodities — you can have too much of a good thing.
“Overusing text messaging communication may impair social interaction skills,” she said. “Uncensored, abbreviated conversations may be OK in the ‘virtual’ world, but they are not tolerated in reality land.”
Muscari said texting can interfere with studies, classes and sleep and that it is not unusual for students to text during class or into the late hours of the night.
The amount of time students are spending text messaging has begun to show effects in their abilities to write and communicate verbally with one another.
Nicole Ferro, a seventh-grade English teacher at Friendswood Junior High, has seen the effects of text messaging firsthand in her classroom.
“I have definitely noticed a lack of an ability to spell because they are so used to abbreviating in texting,” she said.
Ferro said she notices these effects in her students’ writing as well as in their speech.
“I have had a couple of students respond to me by saying ‘IDK,’ which means ‘I don’t know,’ when I ask them a question,” she said. “It has really caught me off guard because I have never dealt with something like this before.”
Ferro said the most important thing is that students learn to separate texting from the real world.
Aaron Cooper, a Harvard-educated clinical psychologist with The Family Institute at Northwestern University, said that it is too soon to say if text messaging will actually ruin students’ verbal ability, but some fear that it will.
“I think it depends on how the balance among all forms of communication available to kids,” Cooper said. “Face-to-face conversation, phone conversation, instant messaging on the computer and text messaging. I think that an excess of text messaging where kids don’t hear nonverbal signals or read facial nuances, will perhaps compromise their ability to engage in highly skilled interpersonal communication when they’re together.”
Another negative effect Muscari said was the amount of cheating that texting has help aide in classrooms.
“In large classrooms and college lecture halls, students can send text answers back and forth to one another,” she said. “These kids are so fast and so good at hiding their cell phones in order to text message, it’s nearly impossible to catch them.”
Muscari and Cooper agree that teachers should allow no cell phone use in class, whether talking or texting.
“Parents must set time limits, curfews, on the use of the cell phone,” Cooper said.
It is important, Cooper said, that parents should make it a point to not allow it during family time or other important moments he said. It is important for parents to self monitor their own cell phone use remembering always that they set an example for their children.
