The Net Generation

As a shortcut, textism has been adopted by the Net Generation in electronic communication.
Two studies have examined if the writing quality is associated with the stated use of textism in day-to-day electronic communication. 718 young people were asked about their monthly use of contextual and linguistic textism, instant messaging, cell minutes, and text messaging.
Additionally, the national survey carried out in 2009 reveals that the utilization of cell phones for the purpose of texting was more than for talking by U.S. teens (Nielsen Mobile, 2009). The actual figure for receiving or sending text messages was 2,899 on an average as against receiving or making 191 phone calls only. Similarly, a national survey of U.S. teens indicate that 47% out of the 2,089 teens could create text messages without looking at the cell phone and the use of cell phone for texting was more than that for talking by the 13- to 17-year-olds (Harris Interactive, 2008).
Since the text messages are limited to 160 characters, therefore, they include many shortcuts (thus they are called as “short messaging system” or SMS). Multiple complex keystrokes are used for composing them on cell phones. They have become a component of common communication jargon. The examples are that the words are abbreviated (e.g., wed instead of Wednesday), some letters are removed (e.g., comin for coming), acronyms are used (e.g., LOL, IMHO), symbols are used in place of words (e.g., & for and), apostrophes are not used (e.g., dont for don’t), “emoticons” are created using special sequence of characters for expressing emotions (e.g.,  for being happy), capital letters are used for expressing strong fellings (e.g., I AM HAPPY), and particular symbols are placed before and after some words to increase the intensity of feeling (e.g., I **like** you).
The use of these shortcuts have been condemned by the media and the educators because it is causing the Generation Txt, youth, as labeled by Thurlow (2003) to lose their ability to write English prose that is widely acceptable. Thurlow (2006) analyzed more than 100 articles in one of his articles called ‘From Statistical Panic to Moral Panic’ on the said topic. He found that the text messaging tone was very damaging to the subject of English.

An article in USA Today Magazine (2008) ‘Texting, Testing Destroys Kids’ Writing Styles’ showed supporting the claims by quoting Jacquie Ream, who is the author of book called K.I.S.S: Keep it Short and Simple (2005), that kids are not learning how to spell instead they are learning shorthand and acronyms because the written word is being destroyed by text messaging. Students are typing one line at a time in their cellphones, not writing letters. When texting, feelings are not communicated with words but with emotions which are smiley faces made sideways. Kids are using the shorthand jargon which is not even used as a complete thought (p.8). Crystal (2008) responded to this through his book Txting: The Gr8 Db8 (2008) by arguing that texting should not be considered an important element when children having real problems in English literacy are being discussed. If a child has a writing and reading problem, use of technology that is demanding sophisticated writing and reading abilities cannot predispose of that child. And even if the child starts to text, this would help him in writing instead of becoming a hindrance (p. 157).

Pew American and Internet Life Project surveyed 12 to 17 year olds (Lenhart, Arafeh, Smith, & Macgill, 2008) the result of which supported this assertion. It was found that 86% teens believed that for success in life proper writing is important, 64% teens said that informal writing has become incorporated in their school writing in which 50% of them remove the punctuation and capitalization, 38% use shortcuts for instance LOL, and 25% use emoticons. 11% teens said that electronic communication harmed their writing whereas 73% said that no impact had been felt.
The message given by media that text messaging is destroying ability to write (Thurlow, 2006) also suggests that when youth use the language shortcut for writing they are generating bad habits of writing because of which they would be unable to write successfully in Standard English prose. Low-Road/High-Road Transfer of Learning Theory was suggested by Saloman and Perkins (1989) in which low-road transfer means an automatic or learned transfer of skills when the two tasks to be performed are closely related. In contrast, high-road transfer means that the skills acquired previously are used more consciously when writing. In addition to this, Brown, Collins and Duguid (1989) said that unintentional transfer of skills takes place under situated learning or leaning by doing. These two theories when combined together suggest that people who are using excess shortcuts in everyday writing are predicted to transfer those texting skills to the Standard English prose writing which as a result would lower their ability to write properly. In addition, low-road transfer occurs when task is situated similarly to informal messaging which leads to more informal writing abilities. In comparison, when the task is situated dissimilarly to informal text messaging, impact on writing abilities is less according to the high-road transfer theory.
Method
Participants
relevant comparisons.
Method
Participants
The data of two very similar researches is combined in this particular study. Each of the studies whose data has been used was a part of bigger study which had similar questions and these questions are explored in this current report. An anonymous online survey was presented to the sample of participants aged 11 and above. In this particular study the people who participated in those studies and were in between the age of 18 to 25 was included to make pertinent comparisons.

Participants of Study 1: 1,319 contestants participated in Study 1, which included 335 people between 18- to 25 years of age; 62% females and 38% males. As per ethnic background, this sample stood for the population of basin of Los Angeles containing a blend of (14%) African Americans, (30%) Whites, (38%) Latino/as, (14%) Asians and (5%) people of mixed/other background.
Educationally, among them who had college degree were 25%, those who had a little time in college were 65%, and 10% were those who did not take any college or courses. Participants who completed their surveys entirely were included in sample.

Study 2 participants. In Study 2, the 1,226 participants included 383 18- to 25-year-olds,
Participants of Study 2: 1,226 participants were included in Study 2, out of the total 383 and aged between 18- 25 years, 57% were females and 43% were males. According to ethnic background, 20% were African Americans, 38% Latino/as, 10% Asians, 5% mixed or other background and 27% Whites. Educationally, 16% had a degree of college, 18% did not take any courses of college, and 66% took some college. Similarly only those partakers who completed their surveys entirely were included in sample.

There weren't any demographic differences among the participants of two studies with respect to gender: χ2 (1, N = 718) = 1.79, p > .05; or
Ethnicity: χ2 (4, N = 721) = 6.69, p > .05. However, there was a considerable difference in two studies educationally, in which Study 1 had more educated participants than Study 2: χ2(2, N = 718) = 13.86, p <.001; Cramer’s V = .14 (Nolan & Heinzen, 2007.

Measures
The bigger surveys integrated various procedures, but merely a subset was exercised to address hypothesis for this particular report.
Reported use of communication tools. The people who took part were inquired about the minutes they use their cell phone and the number of text messages they do monthly. For each one of these, if the supplied number was bigger than three standard deviations, mean was rounded off to precisely that particular whole number. By and large, after making those large responses correct, the result was that they sent an average of 588.69 text messages monthly (range = 0 to 3,474; SD = 839.58) and average minutes they talked on the cell phone were 706.21 monthly (range = 0 to 4,013; SD = 736.23).

Formal writing sample. In both the studies, every subject was requested to put in writing a reaction to following prompt: “Write a note to the manager of the company whose product you use and act as if you would like to put a complain about quality of the service you get or about the product and what you expect from them to take necessary measures about that.”
Sufficient room was on hand, and proper samples of writing were taken in consideration and the mean of analyses was 327.41 (SD = 348.24) characters for Study 1 and for Study 2 it was 327.46 (SD = 367.17).

Informal writing sample. In Study 2 another response was also asked which was to explain in detail about the feeling of being unhappy. What do you do formerly whenever you became unhappy? And what should be done to again become happy?” Average of informal sample writing was considered to be 260.33 (SD = 368.52) characters or roughly 67 characters less than formal samples of writing. Reported general daily use of textisms. Contestants were inquired about how frequently they use different kinds of textisms in electronic communication they do daily together with IM, text messaging and e-mail. Four textisms types were included: (a) short forms such as L8R or LOL; (b) lowercase “i” instead of uppercase I being used as personal pronoun; (c) eliminating apostrophes from abbreviations like instead of don’t , the use of “dont”; and (d) decreasing the words like the use of tht” instead or “u” in lieu of you. Additionally, three contextual type of textisms were also included which represented emotions and feelings including (a) putting in smilies or emoticons like , (b) use of peculiar characters to indicate the emotional condition like ::hug:: or *frown*, and (c) use of all capital letters signifying strong emotions like I AM IRRITATED. A scale was provided from 1 to 5 depicting very often, often, sometimes, rarely, and never and the participants evaluated their personal use of every textism in electronic communication. All these seven extensive classes of textisms depicted the characteristic kinds of shortcuts which are used in the daily communication. No effort was done to distinguish more delicately between textisms for instance unscrambling shortened words in minor groups plus homophones, contractions, accent stylizations and g-clippings. (Plester et al., 2009).
Linguistic Textisms: It have been reported that, student which little collage education as well as those without have poor formal writing skill because of excess use of shortened words while communicating through electronic means. Students which a collage degree don’t have any significant effect. The most effect of linguistic textisms was on the formal writing skills of individual with little college education. In addition to this, it was also reported that in case of informal communication using the lowercase “i” was a one of the reasons of worsening of informal writings for the individual which have some college education and for the individual with no college study leaving apostrophes was the reason of bettering informal writings. Using linguistic textisms have no effect on the writing skills of individuals having a college degree.


Contextual Textism: in case of formal writing, using of smilies is one of the reason behind better formal communication for individuals which have not been to college and it was also reported that people which have no collage education do most use of these emotional states and also contextual textism which have related to improvement in informal writing. There were no changes in writing quality of any other segment.



Communication use: individual which have been to some collage, due to excess text messaging there have been a decline in the ability of formal writing but there is improvement informal writing. Where as all the participants which are found using text messages have improved their informal writing. Moreover, participants which have some collage or have a college degree, due to instant message there ability of writing formally have gone worse.


As in case of informal writing the founding was totally opposite of those which were reported in formal writing. For all the participants which uses text messages have better writing according to Low-Road Theory of Situated Learning. As for those with no college the use of both contextual and linguistic textism have bee related to improvement in informal writing. As in case of informal writing for individual have some college, there was increase in use of lowercase “i” which resulted in worsening of informal writing. There was no relationship found between informal writing and textisms as in case of individual with college degree. The results, at least in case of no college participants, use of contextual and linguistic textisms have improved their informal writing.



The conclusion of all the results suggests us that there are different relationships between textisms and writing in case of both formal as well as informal and the variations due to various levels of educations. It is found there is positive or direct relationship in case of informal writing and negative as for formal writing. On of the reason could be that, while writing a letter which is formal, as we could consider in case of writing letter to file a complain against defective purchase, due to normal communication is filled with linguistic textisms and he have no collage degree he many face difficulty to fully express what he wants to say. In contrast, if a person is writing about some which brings happiness or an emotional topic, the individual not gone to college will benefit form his daily using of both contextual and linguistic textism. in nature, this is possible that young individual can change their style according to the audience or as in case of or study, the formality for formal writing (Androutsopoulos, 2006; Paolillo, 2001; Ferreira da Cruz, 2008). This can also be concluded that individual with no college experience, the capability of using contextual and linguistic textisms, which are in fact a good way to express large information in short way, may help them in producing better with having less education.




It have been seen that there is a great difference in use of computer in case of children and adults. Majority of the children uses computer for two main purposes that is for entertainment and for contacting with peers using different instant messaging soft wares like MSN Messenger. Children even in its eights sit on computer to chat or converse online, most of the time for hours. they use different accessories like webcam and other audio devices concurrently most of the time. Most of the children do enjoy instant messaging but there have been problems due to different features that relates to a very different way it is used.

There have been rise in use of IM (Instant Messaging) programs. This is the reason of attraction for both scholars and media[1]. There have been many researches which have studies on the different uses of IM and their impact on social life, work places [2,3], young and teenagers [1,4,5]. The thing which is still not noticed is that IM is been used by the youngest users of Internet.




As mentioned earlier children as young as eight use computer to chat and most of the time for many hours. The most used IM among the young children l is Microsoft Internet Messenger. This choice have been noticed during research when interview were conducted with children and different studies all around the world also shows such preference [5,6,7]

The focus of this study is to explain how children use new forms of communication, they way they personalize settings, and different usability problems that are encountered while chatting through MSN Messenger.
There is a swift growth in the usage of Instant Messaging programs (IM). The scholars and media are being thoughtful towards this particular truth. A latest medium of communication is introduced in the form of IM, and in order to talk about its social implications by the youth and the teenagers [1, 4, 5], particularly in the place of work [2, 3], the publication of numerous research took place. Most of the users of IM are the youth, which is not really observed by anyone.

In order to have an online conversation, or “chatting”, young kids up to the age of eight years, sit in front of their computers, and usually they spend hours in this particular activity. The Microsoft Internet Messenger is among the IM programs, which is used by most of the young children. This is revealed when the children were interviewed for the purpose of this research, moreover, it is also supported by the number of publications took place worldwide on the youth and on-line communication.

Main aspects of IM found in the literature
The main facets of IM which are covered by the literature
Following are the problems which were researched and resolved in the past publications, with respect to the several facets that are involved in the use of IM.

• Linguistic Implications: papers from Sweden [7], Spain [5], United States [8] and the United Kingdom [6].

• Social Implications: According to the propositions of most of the research, acceptance of IM is more important than approval of IM, because of the rapid and steady improvement of digital communications technologies [1, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12], on the other hand this new form of communication [6] is also evaluated critically by some researches.

• College students’ use of IM in the workplace [2, 6].

• The fear over the young kids who use IM, could stuck in the trap of the criminals: the children because of their immaturity does not understand this fact and it is very easy to acquire personal and confidential data from them, as they are desperate to have a meeting with the people they meet on an internet conversation, which is not that reliable [6, 10].

• Some papers advert to research on the blueprint and usability for the public in general.

The significance of analyzing and testing children’s attitude, with respect to the use of computers:
It is the assumption of some people that “the evaluation of the utility of a children’s product can be done by them just because they have got children or once they were children, but usually it does not really helps.” For an instance a condition was analyzed in which an educational software was used in testing the drag and drop interactivity. In which different types of fruits were supposed to choose by the children to place in a mixer. The virtual items were left on the top of the mixer by the children, so that they can drop them in; which was not really expected by the software developers [17].


The means of processing information by the children [19], or the problems confronted by them [17, 18], is not actually exposed, because no such assessment is done for this particular objective. A research is required to have a close look at the usage of IM by the youth, as there is no difference in the IM and others in the above respect.

Numbers of conversation windows are opened by them at the same time, or sometimes they chat with more than one “buddy” in a single window. As per a record of a child, eleven dialog windows were opened in front of her at the same time. The multimedia resources, that are the facility of audio and video, are used effectively for this purpose. All the devices are being used by them at the same time, which includes; keyboard, webcam, microphone, earphone or loudspeakers; and they would like to have these devices, if they are not available to them.

It has been noticed that during conversation with number of contacts, or when carrying out any activity, the children maximize all the dialogue boxes that are present on the screen. The activity might include web browsing Thus, in this way the whole screen is taken up. The program of msn messenger is not particularly created to be used by young children. The program of instant messaging is a source of great enjoyment for them but at the same time many features that are present are causing problems of usability to them. Kids usually encounter many difficulties while running this program. It is actually being used in a different manner as compare to how adults use this program. The types of difficulties that are involved are related to ways they are using it.

Personal configurations
7.1.2. Nicks (nicknames)

Nick names are the names by which the internet messenger users are known. The type of nick that a user chooses to set varies, depending on the state of mind, status and so on. The nick names normally their own names which can either be in parts or full. These nicks are not only used in instant messaging but children also use them to attract the second person. Nicks not only consist of words but comprises of images such as emotional faces, other than this, punctuations and different sort of drawings are used that give a slight visual effects. The way kids create their nicks is shown by a fine example. Considering a girl who was a daughter of a pregnant mother. The lady, at the point of interview was unsure about the gender of her baby as illustrated by the fig 5. the marks of punctuations were used by her which were placed both before and after her real name. The resultant drawing was some what similar to a face of a cat. There was no reason placing it except that it looked attractive. The icons shown between the phrase are both the genders that represent a sister or a brother.


Language related issues
Issues related to language
The grammatical conventions are not considered important by the children. They pay no attention when using instant messaging. Similar is the case with adults and teenagers. Certain Abbreviations, phonetic substitutions or acronyms are used instead of it. Children know that this type of writing is not appreciated in school but still convention as a means of communication is not used by them

Along with others, sentences such as “how are you doing”? Would become “how u doing”? similarly the word “before” is change to “b4” which makes the conversation fast [7,8,20].

9. Software usability problems
Too much usage of emotions by an individual gives rise to problems. This is because the number of images that a single instant messenger user can use is limited. More over, the sentences that contain more images and a few letters are often difficult to read.

There are several type of emotions that are saved and used by the individuals. Every time a message is typed a user uses different emotions and expressions as they provide an immediate shortcut. The Portuguese use the word “FOI” instead of “WAS” and “OI” is used instead of “HI”. If a single emotion is available as a substitute, a child would write “OI” and an animated image would show after the letter “F” when “FOI” is typed. It is obvious that numerous emotions are used when typing a message. How ever, this program does not allow number of images that exceed five per IM. The entire sentence should then be briefed by rewriting it or parting them.

As per the research study done on a group of eighteen kids, only a kid of ten years did not like to use emoticons, however, all others considered emoticons as “cool”. As per MSN’s attribute, only five emoticons are allowed in an IM and to overcome this thing, kids ask their contacts to use the capital letters as the shortcuts do not appear in uppercase message and it allows them to send the messages that exceed the above-said emoticon attribute of MSN. A nine years old girl Karen was of the view that the presence and involvement of emoticons creates trouble in creating a nick name and she was very upset a day before when she wanted to have a cool nick name and an emoticon kept on interfering . No matter these emoticons add a smart touch to the text, there is always a room for improvement in order to make them user-friendly.
In addition to this, typing less obvious shortcuts to save the emoticons can help in avoiding the said problem. However, it needs to be explained more clearly to the young users as every time they save a new emoticon to process further.

Another problem being faced by the children at this age group was they were having difficulty in identifying their contact windows correctly. They can’t completely rely on the nick names as they keep on changing every now and then. A nine year old girl, Daniel desperately wanted a way out to identify her contacts in a constant manner rather than checking the email address before typing any message. In addition to this issue, Natalie demonstrated that she had to keep her eyes only 20 centimeters away from the screen in order to make sure that to whom she was talking to. Constantly fluctuating nick names of the contacts may lead to social problems as well because the messages may be interchanged i.e A’s message could be typed on B’s window and vice versa.

Study showed that most of the users were not very happy with the use of Nudges and they found it quite irritating in some manner. In a group of eighteen children, all were unaware of blocking this Nudge option except for an eleven year old boy who knew how to block this attribute of MSN, the reason being that the way to block the nudge was technical to understand. Nudge option is specially used at times when the person at the other side takes a longer time to reply back or when there is no other person available to chat. Another irritating attribute of MSN was the pop up window of “MSN Today” and the children seem to be very interesting in exploring the techniques to configure their IM settings in addition to learn about blocking the pop up stuff.