I wasn't aware that we were supposed to be afraid of it, but apparently there has been a debate in the scientific and research community about the effects of the instant messaging dialect on higher logical and linguistic functions. Two researchers took it upon themselves to find out what is really going on - and what IS really going on? Nothing.

 

Linguistic elitists have been voicing their concern that the brevity and speed of instant messaging language would fundamentally change the way that upcoming generations would use language and communicate,  in a bad way according to them.

 

The researchers studied the phraseology and grammatical sequencing of the instant messages closely and found that even though the dialect appears to be dumbed down for speed, there is actually no loss of information being exchanged.

 

"Everybody thinks kids are ruining their language by using instant messaging, but these teens' messaging shows them expressing themselves flexibly through all registers. They actually show an extremely lucid command of the language. We shouldn't worry," said one of the researchers, Sali Tagliamonte.

 

If it wasn't obvious enough before the studies were done, language is something that changes in context, just like clothes, food, moods, and everything else that we experience in an active manner, but now we have a scientific basis to ignore the cranky old people in the towers of British universities. Max win.