IM usage study, with some interesting findings
This is a long study about Gender Issues in College Student Use of Instant Messaging. But if you can’t read the whole thing, these are the highlights.
Mainly, they claim to find clear differences between the way men and women use IM. I read their differences. And you know what, I actually know college/university students who use their IM
accordingly. But I also know just as many, if not more, who don’t.
Heck, if what they claim was true, then I would just have to be an
hermaphrodite.
Which I’m not. Seriously.
But what I find most amusing is the general claims, beside the main
interest of the study, that most subjects were found to not use those
obnoxious shortening of words which are so common on SMS and IM conversations (Oh, wait, did I say common on IM?! Well, guess I did… Imagine that…). And that there is an extremely low percentage of spelling errors in those IM conversations (about 1%).
So very little occurrences of "10x u r gr8", and very little occurrences of people forgetting a few letters, or slightly twisting words.
That’s absolute rubbish, you know. I use IM,
and mostly with university/college students and recent graduates,
considering I’m a part of that group myself. Personally, I try very
much to keep my spelling, and using full words. And I fail on the
spelling front occasionally. Many people don’t try, or care, to work
for spelling, and some don’t care to work to write whole words. A much
higher percent than this study find...
Heck, most of the time people don’t even bother commenting when they’re conversation partner shorten a word, or misspell a word, because of how common it is, and how everyone is doing it anyway.
April 11th, 2005 at 1:27 EET | Categories: Culture, Web |
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