My microblog was made using the message app on my iPhone. I used the prompt, Education is not about…The statement I generated wasn’t a reflection of ideas in blogs, academic articles, or magazines, etc., and I wonder if this was because I created it using Message?  Would it have turned out differently if I used a platform such as Twitter or Instagram?

The statement didn’t sound like me because I don’t think it really makes sense or offers a complete thought. Many of the prompts given were often quite simplistic (lots of “to” “and” “the” as options); however, I was intrigued to discover that when I selected “you” and then “and”, two of the options given to me were distinct names of people in my life. Only one of the two names I type somewhat regularly, the other one I rarely type, so I was curious why the algorithm would have given those names in particular?

Admittedly, I don’t use public writing spaces very often which is why I chose the Message app to create my predictive prompt. When messaging, I rarely use predictive prompts, so this was a different experience for me. What I connected to the most in this task was how often the children in my care will start to write a word, look for it in the prompts, and select it rather than typing out the word to full completion themselves. This is because many of them are still developing language skills (particularly spelling), but also because many of them just find it is faster than typing.

Which makes me wonder, how many other people do this regularly when they type, especially adults? And how much more common will this become as this next generation grows up with the option of predictive prompts? Because, yes, I do feel this will influence how and what people write, especially if there are more reliant on given prompts rather than their own thinking.