Texting makes kids dumb -- science fact!
By Vlad Savov 
posted August 13th 2009 2:03AM
posted August 13th 2009 2:03AM
[Via Switched]
posted August 13th 2009 2:03AM
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My honors students need calculators to multiply or divide by 10, how pathetic is that???
I discovered this phone function where you can actually talk, interactively or leave a message. I can do it quicker than typing and I don't even have to look at the screen while I'm doing it.
My little cousin has graduated college at 18 and is now doing her Masters, after which she'll do her PhD, and she's a text junkie....she not only shortens words, she mega shortens them. She's not dumb. She's not any less smart than she could have been either....and while I do agree that there may be some correlation to the masses that DEPEND on texting finishing words, I don't think that it's some epidemic that will create a less smart generation, and while I don't believe that it's like TV in relation to reading, I do believe that the simple 'fix' is to make sure that your kid/student likes school, wants an education vs. is forced to school every day and wants to better themselves as people - that will offset ne wrd txtn' dmbns gng arnd.
She's getting her PhD, and somehow she's "dumb" for texting? No, I disagree. She's smart, because she doesn't need to waste time on unnecessary tasks, and she can therefore get a higher degree.
I used predictive text completion on my phone quite a bit during my university days, as well as code completion from coding, and I finished exams faster but with high grades. However, I wasn't at Monash university :P
Being accustomed to more intelligent speech and communication, I always find it harder to read messages with incorrect spelling and grammar. If you have a phone without a full keyboard, that's one thing, but when you and what feels like half the population in the US these days have a touchscreen device or some other smartphone, it's ridiculously annoying. I'm a quick reader; stopping to decipher a new acronym or spelling slows me down and can be irritating. As for what the article was saying, predictive texting seems like it encourages users to abandon any thought at all when messaging. Now, if those same kids happen to perform poorly in schools, I would say that that's because they're used to things being done for them. It's part of their lifestyle, and this merely contributes to it. In my mind, it's certainly not the cause. TV, internet, phones (Oh joy! Now we can blame the telcos too.), etc., they all have features that require little user input. It's only a matter of time, for some people.
That said, you still have to be relatively stupid to be affected by any basic form of technology. As for me, as nice as it is to even have the ability to text people I know, spending a lifetime doing it seems too wasteful. Ah, I kid. I think I'd trade some of that time for a fun, responsible night instead, but that's just me. MMS and email are more useful, since you can actually send something of more value through them.
-MD33
Will and asdf are correct. This "study" is a joke. Haven't these researchers ever heard that correlation does not imply causation? The first sentence of the news article reports a causal conclusion ("Regular predictive texting, not radiation, ***affects*** the brain power of mobile phone using young people, say Australian experts.") based on purely correlative data. But there's no evidence to support that; it's just as possible that the causation is the other way around, that predictive texters tend to be people who work hastily and are error-prone. Or that there is no cause-effect relationship between the variables at all. Yet these possibilities are not addressed. To draw a causal conclusion from this study...that's just bad science. No, sorry, it's bad logic. No, actually, it's just....bad. Come on, any high school first-year college student who takes a statistics class--or any other of a number of classes--could tell you this is bad. See http://www.fallacyfiles.org/cumhocfa.html if you don't take my word for it.
That and the researchers don't seem to understand the concept of a "control" group, particularly the "control" part (it isn't a control group if you don't *control* the variable in question, guys.) How the hell did this study get published?! I could do better than this and I'm still an undergrad!
...
sorry about that, got a bit carried away...heh heh....
And before anyone calls me on it, no, the example I gave is not really reverse causation, which would actually mean that working hastily causes predictive texting. A better hypothesis is that both are caused by the third variable of the person being an idiot.
Since I got my new phone I never use any kind of predictive text, since it has a keyboard. I always try to use correct Swedish(Yep, I live in Sweden) in my messages. Still I find myself using short words, both English and Swedish. But does that mean I always use short words? No, it's simply a matter of context, when to use these short words or not. Oh well, I have not seen the situation in USA and other countries, but here in Sweden I think most of the students(including me), does not use short words in tests and whatnot.
dis s bullsh1t.
txtng dsnt mke kids dmb.
I don't kow about predictive texting but I can see the same for japanese character.
Using the PC or other word processors to write the complicated japanese character (chinese in fact), a lot of japanese forget how to write them and can't do it manually then!
Spelling errors, especially due to more hurrying, is not indicative of IQ. Whoever wrote the headline for this article is DUMB!!!!
deer engdgt,
ur storys r 2 long & u need 2 use smlr wrds
That guy in the pic already looks dumber!
This was actually funny, Paul. :D
Keep it up, you can make it... ;)
Oh, by the way... dumb ain't dumb, actually...
The reason they finish faster and with more errors doesn't have to have anything to do with being stupid! No, it's just the way they got used to writing short texts with their friends full of slang etc... These kids might actually be pretty damn smart, but still, bad habbits are bad habbits after all.
Well, thanks to my full QWERTY keyboard on my Touch Pro, I don't have to EVER worry about using that predictive text bullshit.
(BTW, I'm posting this from my phone...)
Chicken or the egg?
This is a cause vs. effect argument:
Are "predictive texters" dumb because they text or do they text because they are dumb?
Which came 1st da dum txter or da dum kid? ;)
When engaged in one task, the brain diminished attention on others. No matter how good people think they are at multitasking, research has shown that we are not.
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/03/study-says-leave-the-multitasking-to-your-computer.ars
Students who text in class are going to miss information they need to develop skills, and therefore develop them more slowly, if at all. Kids who are likely to text during class would find some other distraction if texting were not available, so I would have to posit that it's not the texting that makes them stupid, but a predilection for self-distraction that sabotages their education and can ultimately lead to the perception that they lack intelligence.
That goofy-looking kid in the photo would seem to look like the poster boy for stupidity, but who knows what the real story is? Appearances can be deceiving.
I dunno about this. T9 still requires your to get the right sequence of letters. If you type "there" using T9, you still need to know how to spell it. The correct sequence would be 84373. If you thought it was spelled "thear", the sequence would be 84327 and T9 would not fix this and anyone would instantly know the it was spelled incorrectly. Predictive text doesn't spell words for you, it predicts out of the sequence of key presses what words you might be trying to spell. And while some devices do "finish" the word for you, if you don't even start it correctly, you're still stuck with a misspelled word and have to correct it.
This research was probably done by some person who doesn't understand T9 and therefore misunderstands the data from his/her research. Shorthand is probably more of a culprit than predictive text.
I'm 13. I use my iPhone, does that make me smart?
I have never failed a single exam, or even got half. I had predictive text on my old phone. It ran WM6. It sucked.
I dont know a single person who uses predictive text, besides my dad.
Predictive text is crap. iPhone's make you smart. End of.
Chances are if you spend your days texting away to all your "peeps" rather than studying you're probably an idiot to begin with.
Sweet, now I finally have an excuse for my stupidity!
Wait...I don't text. Crap.
Texting makes kids dumb
or
dumb kids make texting.
This picture for the article is great. That guy texting looks like he's having trouble breathing and texting at the same time. Is he supposed to be sitting in a car??
Well I guess it's the passenger side... unless he's in the UK or something.
So let me see if I have this right. Some individuals, probably younger in age, decide to start communicating via the text feature on their cell phones. They find that the key pad isn't designed to work with large "cumbersome" words so they adapt. They begin to truncate words to their smallest understandable component. A community soon forms around this new "cannibalized" language. No corporation nor government was behind any of this. No school or university taught this, these people did it on their own.
...and some individuals on this post call that dumb?
@Hey
Speaking of correct grammar, you don't put a space between a word and the punctuation that's after it.
I love how we distract the issue. It’s the bloody cell phone not our educational system, not the budget cuts to schools or absent parents depending on technology to do their duties. I’ll get you, you mobile device and you dog too!
I don't think predictive texting makes kids dumber, but instead it inhibits them from getting any smarter. It was just like how back in the day, there was an argument that calculators made kids too reliant on it and in turn not figuring out the math by themselves.
That aside.. logically thinking, to be able to even USE predictive texting, you would first needa very basic semblance of how to correctly spell a word in order for the program to predict what you're trying to spell. For example, a commonly misspelled word like "parallel" would not get a hit in the predictive dictionary if you punch it in as "parralel", or "tomorrow" would not pop up anything in the phone if it is punched in as "tommorrow", and so on.. you get the point.
I guess a further worry would be smartphones like the iPhone or Blackberry which include spell checkers as well.