Are E-mail and Text Messaging Eroding Our Youth's Face to Face Communication Skills?

Remember speech 101?

I remember it like yesterday. I stood gawkish and gasping before a room of glaring, sinister, disinterested eyes, shuffling through a stack of hastily scribbled notes, my throat burning, my mouth parched and dry. It's easy to be comfortable when one is in the audience, after all, but it is an entirely different experience when one stands at the helm. Seizing the podium is a different realm altogether, an often forlorn, unsettling realm, to say the least.

I croaked my way through my assigned subject, "the importance of athletics in school curriculum", and slithered back to my seat, soaked in sweat, hands a tremble. I later got a "C", which was somewhat of a relief as it went. My teacher's primary critique of my efforts? I needed to portray an air of confidence with my appearance and body language, and project my voice using confident, precisely tuned vocabulary. That was in 6th grade.

I can truly claim I've improved over the years. I manage an electronics repair department in an appliance store today, and give product knowledge meetings at least once a week. I stand tall, seize the podium with two firm, confident hands, and speak loudly and clearly, at least for the greater part of it. Quite a turnabout. But meetings are often held remotely these days. Online e-mail training abounds in most businesses. The critical question is, are excessive text messaging and e-mails eroding our youth's ability to speak publicly, or even speak effectively at the casual, peer to peer level? It is my observation that this may be so.