Thesis

Question: Is texting, lolcats, or other forms of online communication harming or improving people's ability to communicate in writing or in speech

Thesis: Texting can greatly harm communication among individuals in both writing and in speech

I generally find that when i text, i sometimes use abbreviations like everybody else, and if people start relying solely on those abbreviations they would start becoming more illiterate because it would be much easier to just remember the abbreviations of the words. The statistics of people that had cellphones in 2001 has been estimated to have been 90 percent, and 96 percent of those people preferred texting ( Plester,Wood, & Bell (2008) p.137). This shows just how many people were dependent on text back then, and it must have increased by now. Texting and textspeak in general has affected many children, this source states that "half of the young people who used text messaging, actually preferred texting their friends to talking to them". This show's how dependent people are becoming to their cellphones now, and text speak will eventually harm their spelling, while lolcats will harm their grammar. The risk is much greater in children because most adults will probably put in the effort to use the same language over the phone that they would anywhere else. There is clear evidence from the source that states that 11-12 year old children who text several times per day lack the quality of speech of those who don't (Plester,Wood, & Bell (2008) p.137). The statistics that I've found out today surprised me a little bit, because i was expecting the dependency of textspeak from children, but never did i expect such great numbers.

Plester, B., Wood, C., & Bell, V. (2008). Txt msg n school literacy: does texting and knowledge of text abbreviations adversely affect children's literacy attainment?. Literacy, 42(3), 137-144.