Are Digital Media Changing Language?

                      In a study of college students' text messaging, my colleague Rich Ling and I found a few more lexical shortenings; yet the grand total of clear abbreviations was only 47 out of 1,473 words.

 

I completely agree with this statement as well am surprised by it. However, although I am surprised, I know few people who frequently abbreviate in text messages, including myself. The majority of friends that I text prefer to spell out words and include few abbreviations. 

 

 

Because of this, I do not believe social media and text messaging has caused students to struggle constructing a sentence. I do, however, worry about future generations. While older generations have no trouble, most of us have not grown up on mobile phones and text messaging like younger generations are currently. Only time will truly tell.