Lakisha T. Tucker

Which one is making our youth dumber -- texting or commercials? The 140 characters of abbreviations and symbols compared to the 30 seconds of stupid songs and animals dancing.
Newsweek released an article stating that “Texting Makes You Stupid….we are falling behind more-literate societies.”

Texting is used not only by teenagers and on the go adults as a quick way of sending a message but also by companies for advertising, sending coupons and by radio stations for contests. This new way of communicating with consumers has spread throughout the marketing arena. There are billboards with texting language written on them instead of using regular English. Calvin Klein is famous for its ads that are written in text language. Radio Stations have text clubs where you can win prizes and tickets to shows for answering the question that they text out or for being the nth caller after you receive the text.

And then there are commercials. Kia has one of the worst ads I have ever seen for a car. I mean really, who is your target audience when your commercials for the last three years are nothing but oversized, stupidly dressed, dancing hamsters? And this year you have added space robots and flying saucers like the rodents aren’t already enough. The other part is that the vehicle is named “Soul” and the hamsters are singing and dancing to old school hip hop music, so not only does the commercial not address any of the aspects of the car except its name but it appears to be racially charged.

I cannot explicitly say which one kills more brain cells texting or commercials that instead of addressing the product have stupid songs and animals dancing. But I think for sure that they both contribute to the atrophy of our kids’ brain cells.

Which one is making our youth dumber: texting or commercials?

Photograph Credit:
Sabrina Segal