Scholars at different colleges and universities across the country are debating whether the writing students do for social means is beneficial or harmful to their skills inside the classroom.

According to a report from The Chronicle of Higher Education, some professors say this new kind of writing, which covers everything from Instant Messaging, blogging and texting to using Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, is valuable because it helps students learn how to write. It allows them to communicate with a larger audience instead of a single faculty member and focus on “real world” issues – even if this generation is not writing in the traditional sense. One professor called it an “explosion in writing,” and another said today is the “age of composition.”

But other members of academia aren’t persuaded that a bunch of abbreviations and sentences that update one’s “status” really constitute an “explosion in writing.” They say there’s no reason to believe the new social media buzz is having a positive impact on students, whose lives sometimes revolve around checking for new friend requests and writing on their friends’ walls. The other day I was driving and heard on the radio that Facebook Addiction Disorder really exists. But I knew this before – just look around a lecture hall where students are “taking notes” on laptops, or walk into a university library. I am just as guilty of it as the next college student.

One professor said there are no recent statistics that show jumps in reading and writing scores. Critics argue that this type of writing is harmful because it perpetuates bad writing – random thoughts translated into sentences made up of basic vocabulary.

Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University, told The Chronicle that scholars should wait it out before drawing conclusions about these new avenues for writing. It’s too early to see long-term implications, he said.

One research project, The Stanford Study of Writing, looks at the culmination of students’ everyday writing over five years, and then draws findings on their confidence levels and development. Check out http://ssw.stanford.edu/index.php to learn more about the study.