The older generation’s complaints about advances in technology have become just as commonplace as technology itself. They claim that the increased use of technology to communicate is damaging grammatical and social abilities in their children and grandchildren. This, however, is not backed by a significant amount of evidence, and there is more evidence of technology’s benefits. Of course, moderation is key to reaping these benefits, but technology is a very useful communication tool when used in the right time and place. Therefore, the benefits of technology on communication skills far outweighs any drawbacks.
The use of abbreviations in text messaging strikes many as destructive to grammar and writing skills. However, the use of abbreviations
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Pinker claims in his article Mind Over Mass Media (2017) that the Internet has increased knowledge and discovery; scientific discoveries are at an all-time high, but if the Internet had negative effects on intelligence this would not be the case (Pinker 1030). Instead, the Internet has increased access to information and decreased the inconvenience of it. To find information, people used to have to go to libraries and search for hours for the right book. Now, people can simply Google search anything they want to know. This is not a sacrifice of intelligence or communication but rather a flourishing of it. Ironically, an example of this benefit is shown in Ray Williams’s online article “FOCROFLOL: Is Texting Damaging Our Language Skills?”, which claims that technology is harmful. This article, published in 2012 on Psychology Today, is a prime example of how news articles and information are easily accessible thanks to the Internet. Before the Internet, this article would have been published in a newspaper or magazine, which would only be accessible to a certain location or to whoever subscribed to that particular magazine or newspaper. However, it is available to many more people thanks to the