The Impact of WhatsApp on Dutch Youths' School Writing

Today's youths are continuously engaged with social media. The informal language they use in computer-mediated communication (CMC) often deviates from spelling and grammar rules of the standard language. Therefore, parents and teachers fear that social media have a negative impact on youths' literacy skills. This paper examines whether such worries are justifiable. An experimental study was conducted with 500 Dutch youths of different educational levels and age groups, to find out if social media affect their productive or perceptive writing skills. We measured whether chatting via WhatsApp di... Mehr ...