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Rene Capistran

Professor Hollinger

6/27/2022

Researched Argumentative Essay

ENG 1301 – 91L

Long have parents and teachers alike expressed their discontent toward cellphones,

videogames and overall screentime. People often argue that these activities will rot your brain,

make you a bad reader and writer, etc. But are they really all that bad? Does texting really lead to

poor grammar skills? Does reading short articles on the internet, as opposed to hardcover books,

make you a worse, less retentive reader? This paper will attempt to answer these questions,

arguing that, while there are some downsides to modern technology with regard to literacy skills,

the positives outweigh the negatives.

One point that I want to start out with, as mentioned by Jann Carroll, is that this is the

first generation of digitally fluent students, who adapt well to information and communication

technology (ICT). These students are being taught by, for the most part, teachers that don’t share

this digital prowess (Carroll, 2011). For this reason, technology is not being utilized to its full

potential in the classroom. “With increased technology use in the classroom several drawbacks

have emerged. Mobile technologies have developed so rapidly that educators struggle to keep

up… As a result, a gap between digital natives, students, and digital immigrants, teachers, began

to appear in 2010.” (Corpuz, 2019). The resulting divide between teachers and students has
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negatively impacted learning in this new digital environment; This divide has put up a barrier

that prevents teachers from exploiting technology to its full potential to provide the best possible

education for their students. I believe this digital barrier will be broken once the current

generation of technologically adaptive students becomes the next generation of teachers.

As mentioned in my introduction, people have argued that texting can lead to poor

literacy skills. “textese includes letter or number substitutions (e.g., c for see, 2 for to),

abbreviations (e.g., txt for text), and non-conventional spellings (e.g., skool for school). This new

style of writing has caused controversy; some suggest that exposing children to these

unconventional spellings will negatively affect their spelling and reading development” ( Hélène

and Whitzman, 2011). Research, however, was conducted by Kemp and Bushnell (2011) to test

the theory that texting negatively impacts literacy skills, finding that the opposite may be true.

The research conducted involved 86 children, ages ranging from 10 to 12. Of the 86, 12 were

non-texters while the remaining 72 texted regularly. ( Hélène and Whitzman, 2011). “Overall,

the children were faster at reading conventional writing than at textese. The experimenters found

that faster reading and composing of conventional and textese messages was correlated

significantly and positively with standardized measures of spelling and reading: children who are

more proficient texters are also better spellers and readers of conventional English.” ( Hélène and

Whitzman, 2011). This finding clearly indicates that there is likely a positive correlation between

reading and writing text messages and reading and writing in standard English. With that being

said, the argument could be made that this correlation comes from children who are already good

readers and writers being good texters. the fact remains, however, that these children are

constantly communicating via text, meaning that they are constantly reading, writing, and

deciphering the meanings behind words and sentences.

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Lastly, I want to cover another topic I touched on in my introduction: Does reading

digital articles, rather than physical books, negatively impact reading and reading retention? Dr.

Marc Franco (2015) asked himself a similar question: “Are we all becoming a bunch of non-

critical readers with 6-second attention spans?” The answer to that question, however, depends

on the reader. As pointed out by Dr. Franco, modern technology provides us with a vast pool of

information and answers; From blog posts to scholarly articles, it’s up to the user to properly

utilize this tool. It can be hard not to let yourself get caught up in distractions when surfing the

web for scholarly resources, however, with enough discipline and experience, things like search

engines and even blog posts can become priceless tools for the betterment of one’s own

education (Franco, 2015). When a child is reading books in class, the child is often uninterested

with what they are reading. This leads to, what I like to call, lazy reading. This is when a person

is not interested or invested in what they are reading, so they skim over it, dozing off into their

imagination every now and again, hardly paying attention to what it is that they’re reading. This

leads to low reading comprehension, bad reading habits and, potentially, an overall distaste for

reading. Thanks to the internet, however, modern-day students have access to a seemingly

infinite pool of all sorts of different topics and information that they might find interesting.

Whether that information is from a wiki page, a blog post, or a scholarly article, if a person is

engaged in what they are reading, their reading comprehension is higher, and they are learning

more about the topic that they are researching. This gives teachers the ability to make a

curriculum based around their students’ individual interests, which could be a way to not only

improve a student's reading comprehension, but improve their ability to find usable, factual

information, making them stronger researchers and preparing them for their advanced

education/career.
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To conclude, I stand by the argument that modern technology, while acknowledging it’s

downsides, is an overall benefit to the literary development of students and has the potential to

be used much more effectively to improve teaching curricula. I believe that the next generation

of teachers will bring a technological adaptiveness and prowess with them, which they can use to

reap the potential benefits of modern technology more efficiently, providing an enriched learning

environment for their students.

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Works Cited

Deacon, Hélène, and Sarah Whitzman. “Does Texting Lead to Poor Literacy Skills?” Literacy

Today, no. 67, Dec. 2011, p. 15. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=a9h&AN=109350045&site=ehost-live.

Carroll, Jann. “From Encyclopaedias to Search Engines: Technological Change and Its Impact

on Literacy Learning.” Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, vol. 34, no. 2, June 2011, pp.

27–34. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=a9h&AN=61967042&site=ehost-live.

Ogborn Corpuz, Jacquelyn. "Impacts of Growing Technology on Students’ Reading and Writing

Skills" (2019). Capstone Projects and Master's Theses. 670,

https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/caps_thes_all/670

Kemp, Nenagh, and Bushnell, C. “Children’s text messaging: abbreviations, input methods and

links with literacy” (2011) Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. 27, 18-27,

http://newliteraciesandgloballearning.weebly.com/uploads/4/0/2/0/4020088/

childrens_text_messaging.pdf
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Franco, Marc. "Impact of social media and technology on literacy and learning (video)."

YouTube, Aug. 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=xdqEdeGTD54&ab_channel=SnapLanguage