Texting vs. GPA

 Background Research

For research we each separately used the search engines Yahoo and Google.  When we used the search engine Yahoo, we used a variety of key words to use in the search.  The very fist combination we used was “GPA and texting.”  The results from the search engine that came up were sites on how to test better, how to maintain a good GPA in college and xanga sites (online blogs).  Then we decided to just use texting as the key word to the search and links to cell phone companies came up offering new texting deals for the summer time. Next we tried to be more specific and use combinations such as “Is there a relationship between texting and GPA?”, “GPA + cell phones + texting”, “GPA + texting correlation” and “texting messages correlation to GPA” as searches.  Links that appeared covered a variety of topics ranging from making texting an elective class in a school in Australia to community chat rooms debating on whether or not cell phones should be permitted at all in schools. However, despite all these links and sites that did not pertain at all to our topic, we did find a website that had a similar idea of the study that we are looking to conduct:http://www.jsonline .com/story/index.aspx?id=320790 &format=print. The main idea of this site was a survey of whether IM (instant messaging) lowers IQ scores. The founders of this site conducted a study at King’s College in London of 1,100 adults at the university. They found results that could possibly be similar to what we will find in our study. This study found that electronic chatter in the form of e-mail, IM, and texting caused a temporary decrease in IQ scores by ten points. This was the only useful website found from the Yahoo search engine.

            In the Google search engine, the first search we made was using the key words, “texting and gpa.” Not much turned up from this search relative to our topic, only a few unrelated results, such as ‘surgeon’s gpa’ and free texting deals. However, after changing the search to “text messaging + gpa,” the most useful site was the same one in found in the yahoo search engine:http://www.jsonline.com/st ory/index.aspx?id=320790 &format=print. But this wasn’t the only thing found in the Google search engine pertaining to our topic; after searching “education vs. texting,” we came up with quite a few more helpful sites.

            We found an article titled ‘Texting Teenagers are proving ‘more literate than ever before’ by Adam Fresco. This article can be found at http://www.timesonline.co. uk/tol/lifeand_style/educa tion/article584810.ece.. This article talks about the fears of how texting may have ruined teenagers ability to write properly. And then goes to say that a two year study shows that current teenagers are actually more literate than ever before. It states that the writing ability of sixteen year olds has never been higher. This was one of the few articles that stated that the text messaging scare of lower IQ levels and GPA’s was a false scare.

            With the same search on the Google search engine, an article titled ‘Report; Text Messaging Harms Written Language’ provides information and opinions stating that text messaging does effect students negatively. An education commission states that the increase in the texting population poses a threat to written standards in Irish schoolchildren, and the frequency in grammar and punctuation errors has become a serious concern. This article can be found at http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/04/26/ireland.text.message.reut /index.html.