The Time magazine headline asks, "Is Texting Killing the English Language?" I haven't read the article yet, so I don't know the author's position, but here's mine:

My answer is "No, it's not. Texting is a patois, a vernacular perfectly understandable to the social group using it." That's the purpose of language, after all, to communicate. Texting does that quite adequately.

I can hear William Safire howling from here.

I sincerely doubt that texting will replace standard English as formal communication, but it might just possibly help with our convoluted (and totally unnecessary) orthography. "U" makes a lot more sense to me than "you" for instance. And I wouldn't mind replacing "to, too and two" with the simple figure "2".

Language evolves in the mouths and fingers of the users, whether we will it or no. I'd say get used to it, because people born in the 21st century, for whom this is their nativespeak, aren't going away and aren't going retrograde.

LOL

p.s. I'm amused that the writer of the article (an associate professor of English) used "it's" incorrectly. Hey, Bud, if you're going to write a formal article for a national magazine, then do it properly.