Google Docs Has Now Become the Hottest Chat App for Teens

An interesting article by The Atlantic has highlighted how Google Docs has become the most popular chat app for teens and students at the schools. While more and more educators are using Google Docs to do collaborative exercises with students in the class, the students are using it to organize running conversations behind their backs.

“We don’t really pass physical notes anymore,” a 15-year old student told the publication. He added that he uses Google Docs to chat just about any time he needs to put his phone away but knows his friends will be on their computers. Sometimes they’ll use the service’s live-chat function, which many teachers don’t even know exists.

If the project isn’t a collaborative one, kids will just create a shared document where they’ll chat line by line in what looks like a paragraph of text. “People will just make a new page and talk in different fonts so you know who is who.”:


Chatting via Google Docs doesn’t just fool teachers; it also tricks parents. When everyone logs on to do homework at night, Google Docs chats come alive. Groups of kids will all collaborate on a document, while their parents believe they’re working on a school project.

Kids use Google Docs to talk about the day’s happenings at school, plan for prom, gossip, flirt, and bully one another.

However, while Google Docs chat may be the hottest communication tool for middle and high schoolers, most teenagers abandon it once they get to college.

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