Another thing besides grammar and spelling (and the tendency of using catch phrases, acronyms, memes and gifs) Penmanship is also in declined.

This all the way. Soon it'll be Weezer, and maybe even White Stripes.

I don't know if he's updated it since going to cable but even after 2000 he was still doing the bit and saying "In the year 2000".

Seeing my first love with 2 kids

I think I said I wasn't trying to romanticise the past to the degree James is saying I am. I know it wasn't all roses then. I did live through it. As for the Internet, I may use it to communicate with YOU guys but it is not the only way I have to communicate. Anyway I apologised to James already so why are you fuelling the fire --- oh yeah, you're an engine aren't you? Hmm.

You only have to look at the "Facebook" thread here to see the shocking level of spelling and grammar proliferating. Obviously I'm not saying every person on FB does that but it seems very prevalent from the admittedly little I've read.

You see? People keep pulling me into fights I don't want. I made my apologies and that should have been the end of it but others want to take me to task too, initiating a new argument and wasting time debating something I've already apologised for. That said, I am right in part of what I say and you surely can't deny that there is overall a terrible decline in the usage of the English language, and that this is mainly due to people using messengers and chat rooms, Facebook, Twitter et al, and to texting as well.

I may not be 100% right, but I'm not 100% wrong. Your points are valid but you should concede or allow that mine are too. I'm not always right, I know that. But there is truth, even partial truth in what I say. Parts of the internet may be populated by --- sorry, are populated by intelligent, well-read people, I certainly don't deny that, but other parts of it are home to people who couldn't spell a word with more than three syllables without having to look it up.

hm we should consider what the point of language is before condemning an entire generation over Facebook syntax.

You say you're apologising but you keep repeating the same offensive and ignorant opinions.

Trollheart the reason you keep being pulled into arguments and especially this particular argument is that over and over again you act as if you're smarter than everyone else. You're coming across as very elitist and condescending. Worst of all whenever you're questioned you play the victim.

When you lie on an operating table below a surgeon that was part of the 'Facebook generation', I doubt the shortening of words will seem important. As Engine said, all the great thinkers these days use social media to express themselves and even (slowly) bring about change - because the world was never perfect and still isn't. Autocorrect should root out any spelling mistakes, because in the world we live in today intelligence isn't measured by those standards.

OH YEAH?! WELL LISTEN HERE MAN! Just kidding, I'm not going to fight you on this point any more. I will say that those FB people who seem stupid are, in the worst case, just like the kids who seemed stupid/weren't paying attention when you were in school. Some kids just don't care about school, does that make the school bad?

And it was hyperbolic and a bit harsh of me to say..

.so I apologize for that. And I do concede that many people on social media networks are, for lack of a better word, stupid. But others aren't, that's how life works. Just don't throw out the baby with the bathwater so to speak.

Even better guys: "Learn to Fly" by foo fighters on classic rock radio. I'm living it. Right now. Shit is a bummer.