Digital Technology and Linguistics Part 1

 Kids and Their Damn Phones

    For this inquiry project, I wanted to explore the correlation between digital technology and its affect on linguistics: syntax, slang, verbal and nonverbal communication, and so on. I was inspired while observing several high school English classes recently. High school has changed so much since I graduated in 2018 and after the COVID-19 pandemic when schools went online, I had to see for myself what those changes were to prepare myself for teaching. The biggest difference I noticed was every student had a MacBook. This was the school I attended and, economically, we were on the lower rung of the totem pole. So, this blew my mind.

    What I observed from this was disturbing. Students responded to daily writing prompts and submitted their responses through the platform the school used. Their responses were displayed and discussed in class. I was horrified to see responses that were single-words, grammatically incorrect, void of any thought, and some which were downright harassment of other students. Meanwhile, during class, some students' attention was focused on online games without the teacher noticing. I was disgusted until I started thinking and questioning this new era more.

    I asked myself Am I the old man who just doesn't understand kids these days, Why isn't the teacher doing something about this, and most importantly Why does it matter? Through this short series of blogs, I will be relaying information from several articles of research answering these questions. The information I found is important for people of all ages, and especially important for teachers.