Does Texting Change How We Think and Learn?
Friday, August 14th, 2009
Mobile phone use and texting have spread like wild fire around the globe. Likely faster than any other technology we have seen (except perhaps for the internet). Texting is a unique style of communication especially when it includes predictive software that provides word completion. Some worry that it teaches us to be fast but inaccurate. The question is, how does texting and mobile phone use in general impact cognition, especially in school-age children?
A new research study from Monash University in Australia found:
“This study provides evidence that using mobile phones is changing children’s behaviour. However, we have not found any serious or long-lasting effect on the way that they think or learn.”
This is good news, opening the door for the cognitive designer to explore the upside – How can we use texting and mobile phones to accelerate the learning and thinking of school-age children? We have seen how other forms of new media such as the web and gaming have been embraced as enablers of educational innovation, why not the mobile phone and texting?
