Is Texting Making Us Bad Writers?

In the scholastic article "Can Texting Help With Spelling"  it talks about how (believe it or not) texting all the time actually does help us with spelling and improves literacy. One particular fact I liked from right off the bat was "Girls outpace boys, averaging more than 4,000 texts per month. That’s more than 130 of them a day, every day, or a text every 10 minutes, almost around the clock." That definitely did not shock me in any way because most of us ladies act as if our phones are our life support. We feel the need to constantly check our Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook in case we miss that one important post! Another interesting fact I enjoyed was that texting boost phonology. I never really thought about it, but it definitely makes sense. In order to type "GR8", "PLS", and "SRSLY"; I would first have to know how to build the words "great", "please", and "seriously". In the article, it encourages you to try creating a textism of your own. I came up with the sentence, "2day I 8 chkn n drank lemon8de." I have to admit it looks horrible and I sound like an idiot, but it's improving my literacy, right?! I thought it was pretty cool to know that ""OK", the most popular American word in the world, was invented during the age of the telegraph." The article explains that teachers back then thought "OK" was just as inappropriate as "c u l8r" is to teachers today. I grew up thinking "OK" was just as equal to "okay" so clearly, that abbreviation has come a long way. At the end of this article, they provided five activities to incorporate texting in classrooms. I think if teachers decided to try these activities it would create a better relationship /environment between the students and their teacher because students would appreciate the usage of their cell phones and be more respectful to the rules knowing there is a point in time of class in which they will actually be allowed to use their phones.