Study: Teens say e-text isn't writing

Nearly every teen uses instant chat, text messaging, or some sort of online social network to keep in touch with friends. But ask a wired teen whether e-mail and other types of electronic communication can be considered the act of "writing," and the answer is likely "no."

A new study released Thursday from the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the National Commission on Writing showed that the majority of U.S. teens, or 60 percent of those surveyed, do not view electronic texts as writing.

Despite that, at least 64 percent of kids age 12 to 17 admit that they incorporate, often accidentally, some informal writing styles from digital communication (e.g., emoticons, "LOL" acronyms, and bad punctuation) into their writing for school.

Apart from their under-classification of digital text, 86 percent of teens consider good writing skills essential to their future success. That's backed up by what their parents believe, too. Eight in 10 parents think that good writing skills are more important now than they were 20 years ago.

All teens write at least some for school, but 93 percent of kids surveyed said that they write for themselves outside of school.

"There is clearly a big gap in the minds of teenagers between the 'real' writing they do for school and the texts they compose for their friends," Amanda Lenhart, co-author of the Pew report, said in a statement. "Yet, it is also clear that writing holds a central place in the lives of teens and in their vision about the skills they need for the future."

Other findings from the study:

--57 percent of teens say they revise and edit more when they write using a computer.

--63 percent of teens say using computers to write makes no difference in the quality of the writing they produce.

To compile its data, Pew interviewed 700 kids by phone last fall, and conducted several focus groups in various U.S. cities last summer. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

[bt1980]

There is something literarily unsettling about this sentence.

"All teens write at least some for school, but 93 percent of kids surveyed said that they write for themselves outside of school."

Me fail Inglush? That's unpossible!

[GhostAlph]

What the,...?

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, nor am I entirely convinced that those comments even go together.

What does 90+ percent of kids writing for themselves outside of school have to do with the snide remark?

[dizzigital]

eText?

So in summary, eText appearing in online information text exchange which also expands into eBooks, articles, and e-mails (which consist of newsletters eCourses and the like) have no relevance, emotion, experience, information, and other positive relevance to their readers?

Or are you referring to simply the micro brief hi bye laugh ha really no way ok bye late text messages and other brief IM's.

Broad statement.

Wrong, thanks for playing.

Robert

[GhostAlph]

Huh?

...where the hell did you get THAT idea?

I think the "broad" statement being made is this:

Adults tell kids, "That crap ain't proper writing!"
The kids tell the adults, "Yeah, we know."

I don't think any statement was being made referencing the validity of emotion or meaning in writing, or any lack thereof, unless you can point it out to me.

[sdencar]

heartening

This story is actually heartening for me. My kids (step-kids) didn't have all the latest text devices. But they are gone now, so I am not in touch with kids who have all the latest gadgets. I was beginning to think that kids made no differentiation between "real" writing, complete with good punctuation and spelling, and goofball internet acronyms. This story suggests that kids DO know the difference. As long as parents and teachers know the difference, and impart that knowledge, we'll do just fine!

[bigmc6000]

Good or Bad??

So I'm trying to figure out the goal in this stat "63 percent of teens say using computers to write makes no difference in the quality of the writing they produce."

So does that man 63% think their writing is better or just equivalent to long hand? Personally I've always been a much better writer sitting at a computer than writing long hand because ideas flow quicker since I type much faster than I could write...

[dizzigital]

Which in turn

allows for brain activity and flow to proceed further with exponential results.

Einstein is another story, he was already operating flowing in the abundant mentality and sense from the get go, which very few, if any, can do so casually.

But I agree with you here.

With the multiples we are granted with this technology and allowing numerous things to be going on at the same time....... that was. This allows our brain juices and ideas to flow more freely and tap into that abundance much easier than sitting in a room with a book (Gross).

eBooks, information, articles, Google AdSense sites, niche markets, cake decoration, horse riding........... would require much more exertion in creating and profiting from had there been no satellite transmissions which in turn allows us the privilege of the internet.

If Einstein were alive today, we'd probably be probing 43 different planets at once initiating the establishment of habitation for Earthlings.

Robert

44343 67401 38037 84337 74343

[Composer_1777]

Whats the point of this study?

Usually a large study like this has some sort of goal. As far as i can tell it's just B.S. some marketing researcher came up with, out of boredom. WOW... E-texting isn't writting, really i could have read a dictionary and told you that. Pointless research and waste of money, good job Marketers, you broke the first rule of research. LOLLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL It's like asking teens is jogging the same as running... Of course not!

[lrosen9999]

Teens and texting

Thanks for your interesting article on texting and kids. You might be interested in our recent research in this area. My colleagues and I have been studying the impact of "textisms" on writing. In a study completed in late 2007, we asked a sample of 678 pre-teens, teens, and young adults to tell us how much they use certain textisms in their daily written ?online communication? and then asked them to write a formal letter to a fictitious company. We then used a standard scoring rubric used to assess writing quality (and did not deduct points for using textisms in their letter unless it affected the rated quality) and found some staggering results:

1. The use of ?contextual textisms? such as smilies, using special characters to indicate feelings (e.g., *hugs*), or using all capital letters to suggest strong emotions WERE NOT RELATED TO THE QUALITY OF THEIR FORMAL LETTER.
2. HOWEVER, the use of ?language-based textisms? such as acronyms (LOL), shortened words (tht instead of that), and removing apostrophes (wont instead of won?t) WERE NEGATIVELY RELATED TO THE QUALITY OF THEIR WRITING. In particular, those who used more of those textisms produced worse writing samples than those who your fewer even after partially out gender and age!

We had hoped that this was not going to be the case (there is some scant data from England suggesting the opposite) and are now exploring it further with a larger sample of subjects and two writing samples ? a formal one and an informal one ? in the hopes of gaining more clarity on the impact of textisms in online communication on writing in the classroom.

For more information on our work please visit www.Me-MySpace-and-I.com.

Dr. Larry Rosen
[e-mail]