The Impact Of Digital Technology On Children And Adults

As a result of the of digital technology in modern society, digital literacy practices that adolescents and young adults engage in on a quotidian basis have profoundly affected not only their influence over technology as a result of its centrality in their lives but also their social skills in digital networking. Web 2.0 technologies have enabled individuals around the world to interact and communicate with one another, constructing an imagined community in the Andersonian sense vis-a-vis digital mediums. However, social scientists as well as members of the media have criticized the adverse impact that text messaging and â€Å"text speak† have had on literacy in youths and adults alike (Turner, 2009). While various empirical studies have†¦show more content†¦Empirical studies have found both a positive correlation between texting and literacy as well as negative results. The mixed results and conflicting findings suggest that literary scores may correlate with litera cy on a continuum depending on the frequency of texting, the use of text speak or so-called textisms, and knowledge of text-speak and textisms. Moreover, the correlation may also be impacted on whether the student is engaging in formal or informal writing. The conflicting results conjure up various questions regarding how the correlation is quantified, which may account for discrepancies in the results. Analysis of the established correlation cannot assertively establish causality, which suggests that further research is necessary to adequately qualify and quantify if disparate literacy levels are amplified and/or governed by text messaging, or lack thereof. The emergence and escalation of text messaging as a key mechanism in the socialization process has led to a paradigm shift in pedagogy, as teachers and professors must learn how to effectively appropriate important academic material through literacy practices within digital environments and contexts and approaches to the learnin g process. Moreover, examining the impact of text messaging friends in