Do our kids even know what an acronym is? Kids today are so busy tweeting with limited characters or texting little bursts of information that they don’t want to use big words. Seriously, if you don’t use the words you learn they will never become a part of your vocabulary. The schools are trying to teach vocabulary, but kids just aren’t using it.
Check out 10 ways texting is ruining the vocabulary of our kids.
- Takes too long to text big words: Even if your kid knows big words there is a chance that his friends won’t and frankly it just takes too long to type in a big word when a smaller one will communicate the same thing.
- Many acronyms already exist that are easier: When something is funny do they text, that is hilarious! Nope, they text… lol or if it’s really funny they text, rofl. These have become standard acronyms on texting so everyone uses them so that they will be understood by their friends.
- Adults don’t understand the acronyms: If you actually text using real words then your folks could go back and read your texts. What if you texted something you don’t want your parents to know. Like WTPT, where’s the party tonight? If they stick to these acronyms most adults won’t know what they are saying and they can avoid getting into trouble.
- Short and sweet: Many times the kids will misspell words so that they can save characters. Spelling and vocabulary go hand in hand. ( If U no wat I mean) Really kids would just write KWIM? (Know what I mean), but they will shorten other sentences and drop punctuation and everything else.
- Dictionaries are changing: In their defense, Dictionaries are there to tell us what a word means and when certain “words” are used enough then they end up in the Dictionary. Some of us purists think that only words should be in the dictionary and not abbreviations or acronyms. When a child goes to look up a word in a dictionary the words we grew up with will have changed. Like Rachael Ray made up EVOO for Extra Virgin Olive Oil and it’s made it into the dictionary. Although, anymore most people don’t even own a dictionary, they look it up online.
- Some teachers are bowing under the pressure: Teachers are even allowing kids to write their term papers in text speak. Now where is the common sense in that? If you don’t even have to know your words or how to spell them when writing a school paper then what is this world coming to? Don’t do it teachers, don’t cave!
- Face to face communication is the exception and not the rule: You might think that kids only use text-speak while texting and that when they are talking to each other they use their vocabulary. Well, if you think that you would be wrong. Not only are teens starting to speak their text speak abbreviations, but texting is making face-to-face communication more difficult for kids. They would rather hide behind their phones than to speak to someone in person.
- Texting and e-mails have done away with letter writing: Another time when we use our vocabularies is when we write letters to each other. We would write out our thoughts in long hand. When was the last time you received a letter in the mail? People just don’t do it anymore. It’s all about the e-mails and texting now and social media. Social media sources may keep us in touch with people we went to high school with, but do we really care?
- Creating a new language: Instead of working on developing their own language they are busy learning and using another language. Or I guess you could call it a different dialect of the same language. Because those of us who speak English can figure out text-speak if we really try. Most of it is intuitive; kids continue to strive to create new abbreviations instead of learning how to converse with words in the English language.
- Spending more time on texting their friends than doing their homework: This final reason is one that is more an effect of time management than the actual use of texting. Kids spend so much time texting to their friends that they aren’t spending enough time on their homework. This may affect their vocabulary because they need to do the work. Make sure kids know how to use the English language before allowing them to text.
