It's all about doing things quicker. But I like to write in "normal" English in AB. On like AIM I chat like any other teen, haha. Lots of abbreviations.

It's because we live in such fast paced world now, children in my view do not learn the art of letter writing, it's much cooler and faster to text and I am baffled by the speed.

It is the era, my son is a writer, but in his text messaging he uses all of the acronym's :)

This always irritates me. It always has and probably always will. I say it's sheer laziness and also in some case blatant disregard to the langage (much like ebonics *shudder*). Although, I have to admit I sometimes use 'ppl'. It started as a joke between a friend and I and it has seeped into my texting and even typing, God help me ahahaha.

Many older people have not yet become aware that in the meantime, young people have invented some parallel languages. They just base on English, but are not really English. Here some information about them: "SMS language or Textese (also known as chatspeak, txt, txtspk, txtk, texting language or txt talk) is a term for the abbreviations and slang most commonly used due to the necessary brevity of mobile phone text messaging, though its use is common on the internet, including e-mail and instant messaging. It can be likened to a rebus, which uses pictures and single letters, or numbers to represent whole words (e.g, "i <3 u" which uses the pictogram of a heart for "love", and the letter "u" replaces "you"). For words which have no common abbreviation, txtese users most commonly remove the vowels from a word, and the reader is forced to interpret a string of consonants by re-adding the vowels (e.g., "dictionary" becomes "dctnry", or "keyboard" becomes "kybrd"). The reader must interpret the abbreviated words depending on the context in which it is used, as there are many examples of words or phrases which use the same abbreviations (e.g., "lol" could mean "laugh out loud" or "lots of love", and "cryn" could mean "crayon" or "crying"). So if someone says "ttyl, lol" they probably mean "talk to you later, lots of love" not "talk to you later, laugh out loud"; and if someone says "omg, lol" they probably mean "oh my god, laugh out loud" not "oh my god, lots of love". Context is key when interpreting txtese, and it is precisely this shortfall which critics of txtese cite as a reason not to use it. The advent of predictive text input and smartphones featuring full QWERTY keyboards may contribute to a reduction in its use. This type of language does not always obey or follow standard grammar; furthermore, the words used in the writing system are not found in standard dictionaries or recognized by language academies." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_language "Internet slang (Internet language, Internet Short-hand, netspeak, or chatspeak) is slang that Internet users have popularized and, in many cases, coined. Such terms often originate with the purpose of saving keystrokes, and many people use the same abbreviations in text messages, instant messaging, and Twitter, or Facebook . Acronyms, keyboard symbols, and shortened words are often methods of abbreviation in Internet slang. In other cases, new dialects of Internet slang such as leet or Lolspeak develop as ingroup memes rather than time savers. In leet speak, letters may be replaced by characters of similar appearance. For this reason, leet is often written as l33t or 1337." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_slang

In college courses as well as in high school teachers do remind their students that texting is not allowed when writing essays. I believe that texting is a valid for of communication good for communicating with people on my cell phone. I do not text much when I email friends or even respond to AB. Writing is writing and texting is not.

because no one gives about school as much as they use to like me i want to drop out

lazy...no...some do and some don't

Yes some people do I cant stand this shit I cnt wat 4 my peps to come chill..... its because people who spell like that think there using "Slang" because there "gangster" and really a disgrace to this country..

Generation gap rearing it's ugly head much?