Texting May Be Taking a Toll. "American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Nielsen Company — almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier. The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation."
Didn't they say pretty much the same thing (give or take "repetitive stress injury") about video games in the '80s, television in the '60s, pinball in the '40s, and motion pictures in the '20s?
Not to mention the endless hours of Internet surfing and chat rooms, instant messaging, and now twittering and tweetering. I suppose one difference about texting and the like is that it is always with us, even in the classrooms and bathrooms. You couldn't do that with movies, pinball machines, and TVs. If you have enough "friends" and "followers" - and some people have thousands - there is always a pretty good chance that you will be interrupted or distracted from whatever else you are doing. That may indeed be worrisome. It's getting to the point where maybe we're all going to start hearing voices in our heads all the time. The Borg Collective: Resistance is futile!
There is a perceptible effect in my domain, high school literature. The article is quite on-target with my experiences. Adolescents know that texting is forbidden at school, yet I routinely catch students texting in their backpacks or supposedly covertly under a desk. They often seem nonplussed when I tell them to put the mobile device away, as if I had deprived them of a basic right.
There is a large generation of kids growing up with text-messaging as a near-primary means of communication. Most of these youngsters do not differentiate text-messaging from regular communication. I see the results when students read: They are much less capable of sounding-out words, even simple graphemes, than students from ten years ago. Most high-schoolers that I have witnessed are atrociously poor writers, much less spellers. Although I am an advocate for a dynamic language, text-messaging and internet memes (i.e. "I kan has chezburger?") are not mere distractions but serious impediments to developing essential language proficiency. I try to teach some basics of a different language (Italian, Arabic, Russian) before each class in order to turn on the language part of students' brains, but in the past few years I have noticed that my students not only no longer try to learn different languages, they care even less about language in general than I have ever witnessed in my twenty-ish years as a professional educator.
Adolescents communicate through Facebook or text-messaging as if it were regular conversation. When they are face-to-face, it is interesting to hear them talk about what they "facebooked" or "texted" each other, not real-life things. Terms such as "creepers" emerge: This is not a vine-like plant but someone who reads Facebook posts without actively participating in chats. It belies a fundamental failure to discern between digital and actual communication. The prevalence of text-messaging and Facebook are not helping children grow up. Adults are often conscious of the risks associated with publishing personal details on the web, but adolescents are by and large not sophisticated enough to discern between private and public information. Most adolescents simply are not capable of using telecommunications effectively. For example, simple research skills are woefully nonexistent. When students use a computer to research something, they first type in the literal phrase into Google or Wikipedia and that is typically the extent of the research effort.
Sorry to rant, but anxiety over text-messaging (and Facebook use) is very real. Kids do get worked up over communicating digitally. It would be nice if they would meet in person and do more true communicating.
Are you saying that high school students are much worse at sounding out simple graphemes than high school students ten years ago, in your experience as a high school lit teacher? If that is the case, that is worrisome news indeed. What are the latest national numbers regarding the reading and writing skills of American high schoolers? It seems like the reports I hear on the news tend to say they are either a little bit worse or a little bit better than they were "before."
In my experience as a parent and as an occasional volunteer tutor, I have found that it's always been unusual to find a high school student who writes really well. The majority of students simply hate the process of writing, and that affects the quality of their writing. Then there are those students who say they enjoy writing, but only a first draft, while loathing the editing and re-writing process. I have found that the only students who write well are also those who enjoy writing and don't mind editing and re-writing. I realize that to say this makes such obvious sense that it almost seems not worth saying. But at a certain point years ago I made the decision to not bother tutoring or otherwise helping students who didn't like to write. I had learned that it was a hopeless endeavor and a waste of time for both me and the student. I can say the same thing about math, by the way. I can only provide help and instruction, not motivation and inspiration. I enjoy language and math, and I feel enthusiastic about them, but I'm not going to worry if my enthusiasm is not contagious! The damn kids have got to bring something to the table besides a bad attitude. I would make a lousy teacher, wouldn't I?