I got my first phone when I was 10 years old. It had about four numbers on them: my mom, my dad, my home, and 911. Yet the one thing that I was excited about was that I could finally start texting like all of my friends have been doing for the last year or so. I must admit that when I started texting, I texted like I had no idea about any basic grammar rules. I used abbreviations and no punctuation constantly. Did it make me seem cool at the time? Yes. Do I still use it now? No. I constantly hear that "texting makes you dumb" or it is an "international phenomenon that has deteriorated the youth mind". I like to think I'm not so dumb now. I don't use "luv" instead of "love" or "u" instead of "you" in school. It might shock some adults that, yes, I know how to properly spell. If you read my texts from about 5th to 9th grade, you would probably think that I had zero knowledge about basic English and that me using that language made me dumb. I understand how nauseating it is to hear adults constantly bashing on the fact that teenagers are texting too much and hurting their minds. It is a relief to hear people like David Crystal and John McWhorter have some faith in the youth today. They both have very strong positions on why texting and technology does not have a negative impact on society today, yet they both do so with different arguments.
David Crystal argues that texting and technology actually improves writing and spelling. He believes that "textspeak" is actually language evolving positively. He believes that the whole point of the style is to "suit a particular technology where space is at a premium". It is not like people use textspeak as a reason of laziness or low vocabulary, it is only because they have adapted the language to fit their specific needs. Crystal has developed several arguments of why textspeak is not negative. Firstly, there are not as many abbreviations in texts as people think. It is not every word that is spelled differently and abbreviated. Secondly, kids did not make up these abbreviations, thus they cannot be blamed for using lower vocabulary. It is not a modern invention. Lastly, he claims that the more you text, the higher your literacy scores. just because someone uses text language constantly, does not mean they don't know the proper spelling. His main point is: children are not as dumb as you may think.
John McWhorter also believes that technology has a had a positive impact on society, but in a different light. He states that just as in formal speech where we can speak what we write, we also write as we speak. For example, if I were to write a speech for English class, I would use formal language. But when we speak to other people, we speak casually. So in that way, we write casually when texting. It is not so much that texting and technology abuses language, it is just that we are simply writing what we are thinking in our head. His second point addresses the fact that people think that technology lessens people academic abilities. He argues with that statement by stating that people have always had problems with spelling and punctuation and teachers have always been complaining about it, even before texting was developed. So texting has not "made peoples vocabulary and grammar skills less", because that has always existed, even dating back to 63 B.C.
Both McWhorter and Crystal make compelling arguments on this issue and we can see both differences and similarities. The first similarity is that textspeak does not affect academic abilities because youth today did not invent textspeak and complaints about poor language has existed long before technology arised. This completely cancels out the popular argument that "technology makes you dumb". Another similarity is that children as not as dumb and uneducated as many people think. It is common to use common language for all age and that people that use a lot of technology can differentiate between academic and casual language. A difference that these two have is that McWhorter does not mention anything about how technology is evolving language positively. Although he does touch up on how some words have changed meaning, Crystal is mostly the one that shows that language is constantly evolving through technology. Another difference is that Crystal backs a lot of his theories on statistics and studies that he has conducted. McWhorter mostly backs his ideas up with a social context rather than numbers and statistics. Overall, as a student who has grown up in the era where texting and technology have exploded, I have heard arguments about this topic so many times. I have read so many articles on how adults think we text and speak. Believe it or not, I do not talk like that and neither do any of my friends. I don't believe that textspeak has negatively influenced my academic skills. It is truly refreshing to hear people like McWhorter and Crystal share such compelling arguments on this topic.
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