Sunday, July 22, 2012

The New Lexicon of Cyber-Social Skills

Sharon Howarth
This question was posted on facebook today-- it got me thinking...

What would you think if a public school teacher was quoted as saying: "I catch myself wondering if as a species, masses of us are "de-volving" ?  quote from Rudyard Kipling

This is currently a common topic among college professors.

There is much consternation and concern about incoming university freshman who not only struggle to appropriately use common writing forms such as grammatically correct sentence or paragraph structure. The theory behind these linguistic deficits? Constant use of an alternate, demand-inspired lexicon of idiosyncratically abbreviated spelling and word usage in tweets, texts and web chat sites.

Large numbers of these incoming students also reportedly demonstrate a disturbing lack of social skills, attributed to the mounting number of hours spent relating to social media and gaming software, rather than direct verbal and interactive contact with human beings.

The above-referenced college profs can also be heard discussing new educational trends expected to become a requisite mainstream offering by their various institutions: social-etiquette skills courses!

These educators are concerned with the anticipated tsunami of students who will have to be educated not only academically, but in the social graces, as well. They cite the increasing 'geek' factor that they see in students who don't appreciate the simple need for courtesy, eye-contact, verbal communication skills or general behavioral etiquette, all of which are necessary to obtain employment and succeed in the social environments they will doubtless encounter in the workplace.

As a family affected by autism spectrum disorders that include a panoply of social skills and communication deficits, I am amazed to see that the general public might be moving toward a sociological and behavioral state similar to our own-- the self-same functioning level which the autistic community struggles daily to overcome. This broadly based generational shift away from 'normative' or neurotypical social, cognitive and linguistic functionality, if unchecked, could likely result in the general population looking more like an autistic population with each passing decade.

This however, could be a good sign for high-functioning autistic/Asperger's folks everywhere. Perhaps while the neurotypical next-gen is moving into their not-so-socially-savvy young adulthood, we can take hope that our struggles with appearing to be more behaviorally mainstreamed may find some respite.

We might even offer some meaningful help to those confused and wired-in sons and daughters of an average neurological orientation!

It's a brave new world and I'm glad these educators have some plans to deal with the influx of ignorance and lowered functional status that is about to hit the zenith point in our tech-based society.

I would be remiss if I fail to acknowledge that I enjoy my own facebook network of friends and family, while regularly using abbreviations common to the tweet-and-text slang we've come to accept in common usage.

It's all about saving cyber-space which is apparently at a premium now.

lol! btw rotflmbo while i think abt the impact 4 all of u aspies or auties out there...