According to one study at Coventry University:

the use of text message abbreviations is linked positively with literacy achievements.

Perhaps just like the pundits who said videos would spell the end for movies attendance (wrong) and music file sharers would never pay for music (not!), maybe the obvious isn’t true with text messaging? Could be that literacy skills cross boundries of text types? Could be, but note that this study also had a sample size of 35 andf that

the children who were better at spelling and writing used the most “textisms”.

Which could mean that like their ability to spell accurately, these kids were also tuned into the different grammar of SMS. It cuold aslo maen taht clihredn are celver.