Is social media use affecting student writing?

Slang commonly used in text-messaging and social media is appearing in students' classroom assignments, report some teachers in this US News & World Report story. One Maryland foreign-language teacher blames students' use of social media for a decrease in the quality of their writing. "They do not capitalize words or use punctuation anymore," teacher Terry Wood said. "Even in e-mails to teachers or [on] writing assignments, any word longer than one syllable is now abbreviated to one."