20 Is texting bad for the English language?

It is not, according to a famous linguist, and I’ve seen this TV programme in which he debunks some of the myths about texting. Firstly, he claims that texting is NOT mainly done by kids, as there are some 3 billion mobile phones in the world, two thirds of those use texting and 80% of these are adults. So, it’s mostly adults that text. Secondly, there are abbreviations used in texting, but kids abbreviate only 10% of the words. The rest is standard English spelling. Thirdly, he said it’s not even something new, as even Queen Victoria used abbreviations (like CUL8R – see you later) more than 100 years ago. Finally, the scientist claim that kids leave out letters primarily because it is ’cool’ and not because they have no idea how to spell them. Therefore, all these abbreviated words are not going to show up in their essays and papers because in order to be able to leave something out, you need to know it had to be there in the first place.