AYKM (are you kidding me)? No, contrary to popular belief, text message-speak or textisms actually improve language skills, according to a recent study. No, RLY (really).
The study, published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, studied 88 children aged between 10 and 12. The researchers, from Coventry University, gave the participants 10 different themes to write about using text messages.
The report, much to the delight of those who love to text, was mostly positive in terms of SMS. The report said:
"Children's use of textisms is not only positively associated with word reading ability, but it may be contributing to reading development."
Dr Beverley Plester, the lead author of the report added:
"The alarm in the media is based on selected anecdotes but actually when we look for examples of text speak in essays we don't seem to find very many. The more exposure you have to the written word the more literate you become and we tend to get better at things that we do for fun.
"What we think of as misspellings, don't really break the rules of language and children have a sophisticated understanding of the appropriate use of words."
Plester also authored a report in 2006 which noted that "those children who were the best at using textisms were also found to be the better spellers and writers." This new study just affirms the prior finding.
But besides her own studies, there are other such reports which have come to these same sorts of conclusions. Last year a study by an Australian psychologist showed that texting and textisms don't ruin a person's spelling ability.
And let's not forget linguistics expert David Crystal's book, Texting: The GR8 DB8, which concludes that texting actually makes people better at communicating, not worse. OMG.