Text Messaging and the Decline of the English Language

As someone who taught English in state schools for more than thirty years nothing gives me more pain than to see the current standard of pupils’ English. Where previously many students spent their evenings and weekends reading Shakespeare and Dickens, now the majority of them are entirely occupied with chatting with their friends online and playing video games. Unless action is taken we will be rearing a nation of virtual illiterates. Anyone who cares about the Queen’s English should be very concerned about recent developments.

However, it is not video games or Facebook which are chiefly responsible for this sad state of affairs. The worst culprit must be the mobile phone and its recent descendants, high tech tablets which children can carry around with them at all times. Many people would ask what the problem with mobile phones could possibly be. The answer is short and simple (like the messages themselves). The problem is SMS texting. While mobile phones certainly have their uses – for example, if your car breaks down on the motorway it is very useful if you can phone your husband to ask for assistance – SMS messages are wholly negative.

The main problem with SMS messages stems from the fact that the messages have to be short and the number of characters is limited. This has resulted in the development of text abbreviations. If students type ‘c u l8r’ instead of ‘see you later’ then they can save characters and type longer messages. While this might at first glance seem to be a positive thing, it has a negative effect on our childrens’ English in the long term. Some students are very easily confused and after spending the week hammering out text abbreviations it is obvious that these expressions will find their way into the students’ homework and eventually their exams. The result will be that many students will fail their exams. Employers everywhere are in fact complaining about the falling English standards of young people. The only consequence can be higher unemployment.

Sadly, the rise of SMS messaging reflects another unfortunate trend in our nation’s youth. Young people today are for the most part incapable of sitting down and reading anything more than a few sentences long. This is hardly surprising if the only reading practice they get is of reading inane messages of fewer than fifty words. I remember my youth when I got my grounding in English reading the wonderful works of Jane Austen, with a glass of lemonade in my hand. I very much doubt that this will be the case with my granddaughter and there is no doubt that we have lost something very important as a result.

Another worrying aspect of the text messaging fad is that young people continually develop these messages as a form of code in order to conceal things from their parents. The average parent could no more read a teenager’s SMS message than they could read Arabic. As a result it is difficult for responsible parents and grandparents to monitor and control their children’s behavior. If you visit this publication’s home page you will find a list of up to date expressions but these change daily as teenagers find ways to avoid the protection of their families.

Unfortunately this does seem to be a problem without a solution. However, there are some things which can be done. Parents should resist children’s requests for mobile phones for as long as possible and limit and control their use. Schools and universities can implement a zero tolerance policy for them on their premises. It may be said that these actions would be ineffective and it is true that it seems as if we are trying to turn back an irresistible tide. However the effort is well worth making. Fifty years ago our society was a peaceful place, free of violence, with intelligent and articulate children. Who would not want to return to those times?