Where Will The Writers Come From?
From Pew Internet Research comes a disturbing report on teens (12-17), technology and writing.
In my household, with a 14-year-old and two parents paranoid on the subject, this report has landed like a bombshell!
While 87% of teens engage in some form of electronic personal communication — text messaging, email or instant messaging, posting comments on social networking sites — 60% of them do not think of these electronic texts as "writing."
Thank god, you might say.
But the study goes on to indicate the substantial extent to which the informal styles of electronic communication are carried into writing for school. Soon to come … the first dissertation using emoticons! So maybe they’ll be able to write web and email copy … but who’s going to write the direct mail?!
25% of teens report they have done creative writing in the past year. Only 8% report they have written an essay in that time. Interestingly, 6% have written computer programs!!
I guess the good news in the study is that 86% of teens believe that good writing ability is an important component of guaranteeing success later in life … with 56% terming it essential.
Call me a curmudgeon, but is there any evidence they are actually taught good writing in school? Indeed, in Pew’s focus groups (which greatly enrich their survey data), students complain about their teachers’ lack of interest in writing and their inability to provide useful feedback!
I say … let’s begin by making them (the students, that is … the teachers might be a lost cause) read Hemingway!
If there’s one saving grace of electronic personal communications, it’s brevity … direct, short sentences, short paragraphs. All of our writing — certainly mine — would benefit from that.
Here’s a nice piece on writing lessons from Hemingway … from a copywriting blog worth following.
Tom
3 responses to “Where Will The Writers Come From?”
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Thanks for sharing. I wonder if you’d be able to see a correlation with the emergence of newer means of communication if you mapped curriculum changes, in terms of similar stats like the 8% writing an essay in the last year, against time.
What other writers besides Hemingway have people found helpful to their copywriting and development of voice in electronic communication?
Disturbing indeed! Whats worrisome is that inability to write well could be a symptom of inability to think well. I think it was the Economists that said it best clarity of writing usually follows clarity of thought.
To follow on your literary inspiration, I am fond of George Orwell’s six rules for writing:
1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Tom,
A very alarming report indeed. But, consider the fact that this very same generation whose incapacity to formally write is also the next generation of consumers reading the mail and media and it might be a natural progression (downward of course).
Makes me wonder what the landscape for DM and advertising will look like in 20 years….is the short-hand slang used in text messaging going to be the new Caples?
Our organization has a tradition of sponsorship where donors are matched up with one of our student volunteers in the field. If the letters that these college kids send back to our donors (un-vetted by SCA I should add) are any indication of things to come, be wary.
Matt Wolcott