BodiMojo Blog

In my household, we have two extremes: the techno-dinosaur husband who refuses to carry a cell phone and has trouble even accessing his email, and, on the other hand, the ever-texting teen, who is constantly being pinged: at the dinner table; past bedtime, and even in the bathroom. On one hand, the archaic husband can never be reached to buy that carton of milk; the teen can never be bothered, since he’s “too busy.”

I’ve noticed that my anger is often more directed at the incommunicado husband than my overly entitled son, since the age of technology has taught me instant gratification, as well as a sense of narcissism: what I say is so important and ground-breaking, it needs to be said immediately: I need a loaf of bread, now, @#!#*!! My son is at least reachable, even if not available, because he’s as desired as the president, phone vibrating at all hours with red-hot news like, “Hey, did you the hear the latest about…”

So I wasn’t surprised to hear the latest Pew study, which found that 75 percent of teens between 12 and 17 now have cell phones, up 45 percent from 2004. The number who text message daily has rocketed up to 54 percent from 38 percetn in the past 18 months.

This of course, has led to much debate: as teen texting soars, will social skills suffer?  Will it harm sleep patterns and thinking patterns? What about literacy? Will texting eventually lead to a new language, WDYT?

As a writer, I was especially interested in whether texting benefits or hurts language skills. One study stated that sending text messages can actually help the grammar and writing skills of teens,  especially for writing informal essays. But another poll said that while kids had the vocabulary to be articulate, words like “no” “but” and yeah” accounted for about third of all teenspeak, and that teens only use about 800 words a day , although they know an average of 40,000 words, or more.

Oh yeah? I bounced this off Remy Marin, BodiMojo teen contributor and Boston-area high school senior. “I personally think that adults tend to be very critical about modern forms of communication, such as texting and IM, and assume they are damaging today’s youth,” says Martin. “Yet I don’t agree with this. While teens don’t go around using formal phrases and extraordinarily eloquent word choices, they don’t only say ‘yeah’, ‘like’, and ‘oh my gosh’.”

She went onto say, although teens tend to use more abbreviated and simple words while texting and IMing, normal, spoken conversations are not any less intelligible than those of teens twenty or thirty years ago. “For example, we have intellectual conversations about politics, world events, and even the media. Those conversations just usually aren’t via text or instant message. While it’s completely reasonable to be concerned about how new technology affects teens, I don’t believe that the notion that texting and IM are limiting their vocabulary holds any weight.”

Texting and IM by itself may not water down language, but add TV, video games, and a teen who is engaged in media almost eight hours a day? That might be a beast of a different sort all together. An updated study found that children average 7.5 hours of media consumption per day, an a increase of almost two hours and fifteen minutes in five years. When multitasking – consuming more than one form of media at the same time  – is taken into effect, the total jumped to 10 hours and 45 minutes. As an example, although she’s not a teen, I have a three-year-old niece who’s front of the television for hours on time – and she is unable to talk yet, despite all of Big Bird’s efforts.

The jury is out – maybe today’s digital natives are ushering in a 100-language, space-age instant code that outdoes our clunky vocabulary of today. I don’t know – I just want someone, besides me, to bring home that jug of milk.