Texting in America

Is texting ruining our children? Yes! As I am writing this story, my word document is telling me that the word texting is not a valid word. So, does that tell you anything? It does to me. It means that all the new words we have floating around that sound good are not even real words at all. I work with the public everyday of the week, and sometimes they bring in their children. Some of these kids are very active in knowing what goes on in the bank, and other kids are not. The other kids I speak of are usually sitting in the lobby with their heads down and their total attention is focused on a phone or a hand held video game. So, I'm going to give you some of the experiences that I have had the pleasure of dealing with.

I'm going to go all the way back to the beginning. I took a computer application class in high school about ten years ago. In that class we learned how to do all kinds of things with the computer. One that stands out in my mind is the word document. Before that, I would have to look up a word in the dictionary if I didn't know how to spell it. Well, after learning how to use the document on the computer, I didn't have to know how to spell a word. The computer did the work so that I wouldn't have to. Now, we take that one step further with the introduction of texting. Tell me exactly what OMG, TTYL, BRB, LOL, BFFL actually mean.

I had a customer to come in one day and she told me a story. She is a school teacher at one of our local schools and she had her kids turn in a term paper. She told me that one of her students turned in a paper that was for the most part a very good paper. She then read the word str8. The child had written this for the word straight. Now tell me that won't have an affect on that child later in life. She is in the prime of her learning and she is learning text talk, not real words. I'm sure you understand the impact this will have on the future of these kids and also on the future of America. If they can't read and write properly, I don't think they will be very success in life.