While some were worried textese could dumb down the younger generation, others weren't. The poem Hughes wrote was actually one of 7,500 entries sent to The Guardian for its text poetry competition. The aim was “to turn text messaging into a creative force.” And to see who could be the most creative, using just 160 characters.
In 2016, a bunch of Dutch researchers got together and looked at findings from a range of studies on the subject. They noted that several showed “children who used textese frequently did not perform poorly on spelling and tasks measuring literacy abilities.”
After completing their own research, they found “Not only may textese improve children’s abilities in written language, as has been attested in previous work, it may also enhance their grammar abilities in spoken language.”
