I regularly see young women pushing prams while communicating with their friends by social media and this made me wonder whether social media and the availability of mobile phones has done anything positive for literacy, not necessarily in the UK, but more specifically where mobile technology is becoming more prevalent.
All we ever hear about mobile technology is invariably bad, but this is primarily the media promulgating scare stories, which sell more than good news.
Certainly a lot of people message each other using an argot, but that is just as much a version of literacy as correct spelling and grammar - it's a step in the right direction, providing it's intelligible to the recipient. Much of it is simply a convenient shorthand.
I looked it up and, yes, a UNESCO study has indeed shown that mobile phones are improving literacy in the 3rd World.
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