The Internet Makes Kids Write More – LOL!
We’ve touched on this issue a bit before, but given that we here at LaunchSquad work in an industry almost entirely based on the written word, its worth revisiting. A major pet peeve of mine is hearing people talk about social technologies as narcissistic or meaningless babble. This – sadly – often comes from traditional media folk who are often scared at how the Internet is revolutionizing their profession, and it’s an irritating and incredibly disingenuous thing to say.
So, Clive Thompson’s piece in Wired, “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy” was a breath of fresh air. In it, Thompson analyzes a study done by a Stanford professor that claims that we in general, and kids specifically, are writing more now than ever, and amazingly, 38 percent of that writing is so-called “life writing,” or personal writing.
This is remarkable if you think back to the pre-Internet and e-mail proliferated 1990s. People simply didn’t write back then unless it was for class or work. I remember when I got my e-mail account in 1997 during college, I used this mysterious new creature primarily for sending assignments and occasionally writing cute little notes to my girlfriend, which still felt oddly impersonal. But think how much that has changed. We now use the written word for interpersonal communication more than any time in history. Yes, some of those conversations are, “OMG, u r the gr8est person I no. LMFAO!!1!” – but it’s still transmission of thought through the written word, something that was dying in the pre-Internet era.
That idea of the Internet killing off writing is beyond irritating and is simply not true. For all the “LOL” and trite abbreviations we see online, there is also a ton of useful stuff that kids – and adults – read and write. People simple read and write a ton more than they did 10-15 years ago. And to all the fuddy duddies who complain about the “death of prose” – please, shut up. More reading and writing is a good thing, be it in the long-winded, haughty pages of the New Yorker, or the adolescent ramblings of MySpace.