...doesn't mean you don't know they're there.

A recent study indicates that despite fears that text messaging is ruining, the teenaged mind, young people are more literate than ever:

Teenagers are ten times more likely to use non-standard English in written exams than in 1980, using colloquial words, informal phrases and text-messaging shorthand — such as m8 for ‘mate’, 2 instead of ‘too’ and u for ‘you’.

Despite this, the two-year study found that today’s teenagers are using far more complex sentence structures, a wider vocabulary and a more accurate use of capital letters, punctuation and spelling.

...via Smart Mobs