Prompt: Some people think that the increasing use of computers and mobile phones nowadays has unwanted effects on young people’s reading and writing skills. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

There is no doubt that regular usage of computers and mobile phones has drastically spiked in recent years. While some believe that this improves the quality of life and does not have any drawbacks, I would strongly argue that it is negatively affecting the reading and writing abilities of youngsters. Ċ First and foremost, the quality of grammar and sentence structure has deteriorated massively due to communicating via mobile chat applications. This is because most teenagers avoid using helping verbs or excessively use abbreviations to write in these smartphone apps. For example, adolescents who use social media platforms such as Twitter or Instagram are getting habituated to write hashtags and incomplete words. In contrast, if smartphones had not become the primary method of communication, a lot of youngsters would have still read books, leading them to learn quality reading and writing skills. Ċ Secondly, heavy usage of computers has reduced focus and range of vocabulary among teenagers. The reason for this is spelling mistakes are automatically corrected in many laptop applications and websites. Furthermore, since internet articles are often short, therefore teenagers are becoming habituated to read and write only for a small period of time. For instance, most children can not write on pen and paper for more than half an hour these days. Alternatively, if laptops did not become the sole medium of writing, it would help youngsters to develop their writing skills and some of them could also become great authors in future. Ċ In conclusion, it can hardly be denied that chatting on mobile phones has decreased the quality of grammar and sentence formation skills, especially among teenagers because of the unnecessarily high usage of abbreviations and hashtags. Writing on computers has decreased the spelling accuracy and concentration power due to autocorrect and smaller length of the text respectively.