Technology As One Of The Reasons Of Illiteracy

Modern day technology has evolved to the point where it controls our everyday life, however, is the technology sensation causing the population to become illiterate? The act of texting has not always been as user friendly as it is today, however people still managed to make it work. The part of the population that did not grow up with the abundance of technology like the current generation, has the belief that texting gets in the way of learning and enables illiteracy.

Over time the way that people communicate over text has developed into a way that promotes good literacy techniques and proper spelling. The assumption that texting promotes illiteracy in the people that constantly communicate via text has to be false because of the fact that texting and communicating has no correlation to your intelligence or your knowledge of literacy.

Communicating without speaking has been occurring since the beginning of time, notes have been passed in the classroom and in the workplace since paper has been available.

Get quality help now

Sweet V

Verified writer

Proficient in: Illiteracy

4.9 (984)

“ Ok, let me say I’m extremely satisfy with the result while it was a last minute thing. I really enjoy the effort put in. ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

Throughout history, communication has taken different forms such as; letters, notes, and emails. All forms of communication must involve literacy skills and the ability to write. According to Tatango Learning Center, “the first text message sent from Neil Papworth’s computer to Richard Jarvis’s mobile phone – The message was ‘Merry Christmas’”(Tatango 1). The first text message was sent in 1992 and from that point on communication has changed forever. However, even thought the first text was sent at this point in time, the technology was still way behind.

T9 is a predictive text technology for mobile technologies that came out in 1995. From 1992 until 1995 every word that was typed out had to come from the writer’s personal knowledge. Alan Stewart, a writer for the Britannica Encyclopedia, explains that,” originally Short Message Services (SMS) had a limit of 160 characters per message so a form of shorthand evolved, especially among young people”(Stewart 3). This shorthand took the form of acronyms, and it did not occur because the common population were illiterate but quote the contrary – the fact that young people could formulate all of these acronyms such as; DIY, LOL, and OMG. Simply because the technology was not up to par yet is a perfect example of the intelligence of the generation. The counter argument to that comes from the older millennium, and realizing that they were so much different from the current generation in many ways. They believe that they are different and more intelligent because of the fact that they grew up in a time without technology,they had to learn to do everything for themselves. The history of messaging started well before cellphones were even created, however technology has advance to the point that in 2011, Americans averaged 357 texts per month, a statistic that was unfathomable before the 2000’s.

The popular assumption is that texting makes our population illiterate and causing our young people to become less intelligent. However, there is no obvious connection between bad grammar techniques in texting and poor literary techniques in the classroom. According to Nenagh Kemp and the Washington Post,

“In short, the evidence suggests that grammatical violations in the text messages of children, adolescents, and adults do not reflect a decline in grammatical knowledge. Young people seem well aware that different types of communication require different ways of writing. As long as young writers can maintain this awareness, then the violations of grammar common in digital communication need not be perceived as a reduction in writing skill, but rather as the addition of an alternative, casual style to the writer’s repertoire”(Kemp 18).

The evidence is clear that young adults do not believe that the grammar mistakes and acronyms for real words should be used in their typical everyday writing for school and other matters. In Writing about Writing there is an article called Writing for Their Lives: The None School Literacy of California’s Urban, African American Youth written by Jabari Mahiri and Soraya Sabol and they explain their theory that,” In addition to recognizing their students’ unique writing skills and being open to a wider range of possible texts are suitable for classroom use an review, they were gaining much, much more”(Mahiri 153). Writing skills can be evident in different sources, such as music, movies, or even texting, and Mahiri and Sabol attempt to express the point that the education system should not downplay the success that these students have in expressing themselves and using literary techniques outside of the classroom. The assumption that texting makes people illiterate does not appear to be as popular or anywhere near as true as the other generations of people might want the general public to think.

In 2007, Apple released the first iPhone; coincidentally 2007 was the first year that Americans sent more text messages than phone calls. Furthermore, with the advancements in technology the people must catch up in their skills with this ever evolving generation However, as technology becomes more and more abundant in everyday life, the group of people most likely to elude that texting is hurting the current generation is also the group of people most likely to not attempt to converge with current societal norms. CBS reports that, “Adults 60 and older were the least likely to report using their phone while driving at 7 percent”(CBS 6). That being said, such a small portion of the past generation is willing to use cellphones or give the technology a chance that they have no clue what it could be doing to the current generation. Furthermore, with the advancement of autocorrect student’s understanding of literacy techniques and spelling abilities might actually be improving thanks to text messaging. When a group of students from the University of Arkansas were asked their thoughts on the topic, all their answers seemed to be quite similar. “We don’t believe that texting makes us illiterate, if anything it helps us. I mean I wouldn’t know how to spell half of the words that I use without AutoCorrect on my iPhone”(Survey 1). The text messaging sensation does not appear to be hurting the intelligence of this generation of young people but on the contrary it appears to be helping them. Text messaging does not harm the user’s intelligence nor does it get in the way of learning new literary techniques in the classroom.

The fact of the matter is that the assumption that text messaging is causing the current generation to be illiterate is clearly far from the truth. Text messaging has no correlation to a person’s intelligence, while the acronyms and ways that people used to type were different from what was usual, people did not lose knowledge because of it. Student’s have the common sense about them to separate the way that they text, and the way that they write in the classroom. People could consider texting meanwhile being literate and separating the two, just another addition to the generation gap.