The effect of text messaging on 9- and 10-year-old children's reading, spelling and phonological processing skills

     This article explores a research study that was designed to measure the effect of text messaging on children’s literacy skills.  The specific study group were children ages 9 and 10.  There were 114 children selected to participate in the study.  All of the students had never owned a mobile phone before.  The participants were randomly placed into two groups.  One group was given mobile phones to use on weekends and during a one week vacation from school. The mobile phones were only capable of sending and receiving text messages. The other group was the control group who did no text messaging.  The study was conducted over a ten week period.

The motivation for the study came about from two conflicting points of view on the topic.  There was a widespread concern in the media that texting (using shortened or abbreviated or phonetic substitutes for words) was having a negative impact on childrens’ performance and scores on standardized tests and spelling skills.  A previous study suggested that the children’s literacy skills were improved through the text messaging process.  The researchers in this study found that the previous studies had some limitations in that the used contrived text messaging scenarios and not real world use and they were unable to show causality.

Both groups were given pre and post tests in reading and spelling.  The researchers took into account individual differences in IQ and the children’s performance on the pre test. After all of the components of the study were complete the findings were “that the children who were given access to mobile phones for the purpose of text messaging did not perform differently from the children who were not given mobile phones in terms of their literacy development.”  Also, “textism use during texting was linked to spelling development and the number of messages sent and received was linked to lexical retrieval skills.”  So the conclusion is that even though literacy skills were not improved by the text messaging, there was also no adverse effect on literacy skills from the activity.

This study appears to have been founded in highly scientific procedures and measurements of the data collected.  The one question I would have concerns the group selected. In the researchers own words “The majority of children aged between 8 and 15 years in the United Kingdom and United States own mobile phones, and text messaging (SMS) is a popular function of the phones among this age group.”  So the requirement of selecting students who had never owned a cell phone makes me question if there is a significant factor in this minority that would affect the outcome of the research. 

Wood, C. , Jackson, E. , Hart, L. , Plester, B. , & Wilde, L. (2011). The effect of text messaging on 9- and 10-year-old children's reading, spelling and phonological processing skills. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 27(1), 28-36.