But thanks to a brother and sister team from Leeds, text messaging could become a tool to aid young people's literacy skills.
Adrian Finnegan and Janine Dunnigan have set up their own company to harness thumb power.
Besides sending endless messag
es to pals, children aged eight to 16 will now have a new use for the ubiquitous mobile phone.
By signing up to edu-text, they will be sent a challenging word every day to their phones, complete with its definition and example of it used in everyday context.
"The service can be incorporated into any child's learning programme," said Adrian, 34. "Edu-text's strength is that it is such a simple idea.
"How many kids regularly pick up a dictionary to learn new words? With edu-text, the words come to them with no effort at all."
In order to subscribe, the child's parent must sign up to the service, which costs 25p a day, by texting "edutext" to 82189. Each fee is then charged to the parent's own mobile phone.
Janine, a teacher in Leeds, said the idea had came about following negative publicity regarding mobile phone use and claims of declining standards in education.
The pair went on to develop their project which they believe could use the country's 50 million mobile phones in a positive and educational way.
The service, said Janine, a 28-year-old mother of two, was now up and running and had received very positive feedback from both parents and their children.
Improve
"Parents now have a resource which they can use to directly influence and greatly improve the standard of their child's vocabulary via a medium that they love," she said.
"Also, each time the child receives an edu-text, the parent will also receive a message indicating that the daily word has been delivered."
ian.rosser@ypn.co.uk
