The data show that the teenagers in the study sent, on average, 95 text
messages per day with girls averaging a total of 126 messages per day, whereas boys averaged 64 messages per day. Younger teenagers generally sent more texts per day than older teenagers as illustrated by the graph (Fig. 4.3).
From the graph it can clearly be seen that the fifteen years olds in the study were the most frequent texters and the seventeen year old boys were the least frequent of all the texters. This result is inconsistent with Lenhart et al.‘s study of American teenagers which showed that older teenagers text more than younger teenagers as they tended to have more friends and social networks.
The data also show that 18% of the respondents reported writing text messaging jargon in formal writing. All of these respondents (n=28) were high frequency texters who had five or more years experience with text messaging and averaged more than one hundred text messages per day.
Figure 4.3 Average Number of Text Messages Sent Per Day Based on Age Number
Of Texts Sent Per Day
Age in Years Age (in years)
When asked if teenagers should be given the opportunity to use text messaging jargon in formal writing situations (Question 7), all but four
participants responded ―no‖. This was striking. The teen contributors posited several reasons for their agreement or disagreement. Some of the responses are as follows:
17-year-old female high frequency texter: ―Because its not proper english and allows you to get away with spelling mistakes‖
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 14 15 16 17 Males Females
Note that ―its‖ was not punctuated and ―english‖ was not capitalised.
16-year-old male high frequency texter: ―Because it kills the point of formal writing‖
14 year old female low frequency texter: ―Entirely informal and teachers may not understand‖
15 year old male high frequency texter: ―its bad‖
16 year old low frequency texter: ―it doesn‘t support good grammar only bad habits and is not at all readable
Several responses alluded to teachers, parents and even examiners not understanding text language and as such a lower than deserved mark may be allotted.
Question 8 was ―Do you think that text messaging affects your
conventional writing skills (spelling, punctuation, Grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure, etc)?‖ Most (55%) of the respondents did not think that their text messaging affected their conventional writing skills while 45% thought that text messaging affected their formal writing. Actually, 53% of the male participants and 57% of the females thought that text messaging had no effect on their conventional writing. Further, 48% of the male respondents and 52% of the female respondents were of the opinion that their formal writing skills were affected by their messaging. It was interesting to note that some of the
respondents thought that some of their conventional writing skills were always poor and thought that text messaging neither enhanced nor impeded their formal writing. For instance, a 15-year-old high frequency texter who responded ―no‖ to the question wrote, ―Well sometimes punctuation but very little. I‘ve never been good at punctuation.‖ And, a 16-year-old low frequency texter wrote, ―I‘ve always had bad spelling and grammar so…‖
More of the high frequency texters reported that their text messaging affected their conventional writing skills (See Table 2). However, there was some amount of variation in the ways in which their writing was affected. Of the 42% of high frequency texters who responded ―yes‖ to Question 8, 18% of the
respondents reported that frequent text messaging affects their spelling ability, 12% agree that texting affects their punctuation, and another 12% attribute their constant lexical shortening of words by using phonetic graphemes (readN – reading) to frequent text messaging.
Table 2: Frequency of Text Messaging and Opinions about Its Influence on Formal Writing.
The respondents put forward some interesting reasons for their opinions about text messaging and its influence on their writing skills. Some of these responses are as follows:
-16 year old male high frequency texter who answered yes: ―I used to spell allowed aloud because of texting‖
-17 year old female who answered no to the question: Frequency of Text
Messaging (in times per day)
Opinions About the Influence on Formal Writing
Yes No 1 – 40 (n=60) 46% 54% 41 – 80 (n=16) 50% 50% 81 – 120 (n=40) 60% 40% More than 120 (n=36) 78% 22%
―Because after a while of texting you get used to it and end up writing it for everything‖
-16 year old male high frequency texter who answered yes to the question: ―spelling, shortening things down, spelling how they sound (not correctly), being lazy with spelling‖
-17 year old female high frequency texter who answered yes to the question: ―I do not use text language, either in text message or in any writing I do.‖
-16 year old male who answered no to the question: ―I myself find it easy enough like second nature to switch between the two and check if spelling seems out of place.‖
The participants were also asked if they usually review their work before submitting it and if this review involved the changing of text jargon to
conventional structures. The majority of the respondents (84%) reported that they reviewed their work before submitting it; 38% males and 62% females.
Interestingly the data show that for few (n=12) of the respondents the reviewing of their work involved the changing of text messaging jargon to formal language. This was particularly true for those high frequency texters who responded yes to Question 8 (text messaging influences their formal writing).