Millennials + Cell phones = Bad poetry?

June 1st, 2006 Stewart Posted in Uncategorized |

I’m trying to make sense of two news reports that were forwarded to me today. In one report from the LA Times, we find a medical study that seems to indicate that heavy cell phone use among teens is indicative of unhappiness and general anxiety. The study, done in South Korea, correllates well with similar studies linking depression and cell phone use among college students in the U.S.

The other story, from USA Today, remarks on the generally poor oral communication skills of teens, and their preference for IM, chat, e-mail, and other text-based forms of communications, often even preferring to text friends with their cell phones instead of calling and talking over the phone.

The linkages between these two stories seem disturbing to me, no matter how you slice it. If the majority of cell phone use is actually text-based, and heavy users suffer from depression and anxiety, does that mean that the perception of writing is inherently negative for Millennials? Certainly, the anecdotal evidence suggests that they treat writing as a form of “busy work,” that they plagiarize often and use textual “shortcuts” in their writing, online and off.

Perhaps the relationship with writing is more complex. With so many Millennials raised on technology, texting and IMing each other frequently, it’s possible that they prefer writing to talking because of the lack of intimacy and the ability to create a “narrative persona,” a psuedonymous tone that distances them from their own communications. I’ve heard stories of teen Mils breaking up over IM or e-mail because breaking up over the phone or (God forbid) in person just felt “too real” to them.

Regardless, the USA Today sidebar on writing as a Mil way of life just gets it wrong. It suggests that Mil writing is eloquent and fluid, qualifiers that I have heard no faculty member use in any of the discussions I’ve had with them. “Incomprehensible” is a much more common adjective.