On of the issues we have discussed in our Open University online course Childhood in the Digital Age is whether texting is killing language. Throughout the course we have been challenged to see ourselves as optimists or pessimists on various subjects. We know that children learn by interacting with people around them and exchanging ideas, and texting, social networking or instant messaging can be important ways of communicating. The problem, as the pessimists see it, is that people are now creating/inventing new modes of communication as texting is a sort of new language that is still evolving and as such is threatening or ruining standard written English. Others argue that texting is simply converting spoken language to written language in a very interesting way.
In this TEDtalk John McWhorter argues that texting is not negative, but instead is highly creative and has cognitive benefits - he refers to it as "miraculous". I've added the video below as I think it contains a very interesting perspective. What do you think? Does texting have a positive or negative influence on children's language skills?
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