Google Docs - favorite school chat

As you know, the text editor Google Docs allows for multi-user work, that is, several people can edit one document. Including at the same time. Maybe someone did not think, but this way you can send each other messages in real time. If several people write at the same time in one document, then something like a chat is obtained. In addition, there is a regular chat. It is also convenient to chat in the comments, because they can be quickly removed (accepted).

Not surprisingly, Google Docs has become popular with American students: “As more and more laptops are in high school and high school students, teachers often suggest using Google Docs for joint exercises - and help students follow the lesson plan. However, the students themselves use a text editor to organize conversations behind the backs of teachers, ” writes The Atlantic .

Thus, schoolchildren can communicate with each other right under the teacher’s nose, who will not suspect anything, because the student seems to be working with a text document. Apparently, flirting in Google Docs has become very popular with schoolchildren. If you are 20, then you are already old for such entertainment.
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Teens say they use Google Docs to chat anytime they have to remove the phone, but at the same time they know that friends are also sitting on computers. Sometimes they use the live-chat function, which does not open by default, and the existence of which many teachers do not even know. Or they use the fact that Google allows users to highlight certain phrases or words, and then comment on them through a pop-up window on the right side: they clone the Google teacher’s general document, and then communicate in comments, so the casual viewer thinks they’re just making notes on lesson plan. If the teacher comes closer, they can click the “Allow” button, and the entire stream will disappear.


If the project is not collaborative, children simply create a common document where they talk line by line in what looks like a paragraph of text. “People will just make a new page and speak in different fonts so that you know who is who,” says Skyler, a 15-year-old girl who seems to be a nickname, like all other teenagers her age. - I had one very good friend, and in that lesson we were in different classes. So we emailed each other a document and just chatted about what was going on. ” At the end of the lesson, they simply delete the document or allow all comments.


Chat via Google Docs is not just cheating on teachers; he also deceives his parents. When everyone logs in to do their homework in the evening, Google Docs chats come to life. Groups of children write in a document, while their parents think that they are working on a school project. As described in the February Reddit thread , chat via Google Docs is also a great way to circumvent the parental ban on social networks.

Like the paper notes of the past, most of the Google Docs chat rooms are commonplace, The Atlantic writes. Children talk about the events of the day at school, plan graduation, gossip, flirt, and mock each other . In general, everything is as usual.

In November 2018, the developers of Bark (an application for parental control over the use of the phone by children) warned parents that children are uniting against other children in Google Docs: “They work together to write bad or harmful things in a general Google document. In other cases, children create closed “books of revenge” and invite others to contribute, leaving comments and mocking notes about a particular child, ”it was reported. But according to the teenagers themselves, this is rare. “People just talk shit about teachers, or something like that, talk about their days. Boring garbage, but this is the only way to convey a message to each other, ”said Skyler.

If Google Docs is not used in the class, then the children find use in any other collaboration program that teachers recommend. For example, in the online version of Microsoft Word there are features similar to Google Docs, and it can be used in the same way. For example, in one class, students were told to use OneNote. “Therefore, we simply draw pictures with a highlighter and load memes into a shared folder,” says 16-year-old Nathan from Philadelphia. According to him, he and his classmates were happy to discover the functionality of group messaging last year, but the lack of chats is that if you talk a lot, the work will not be done.


While Google Docs is popular for communication in the middle and high schools, most teenagers refuse it as soon as they get into college, writes The Atlantic . Skye, 20, from the suburbs of Boston says that the memories of Google Docs chats made her feel nostalgic: “Communication in Google Docs is very similar to the time when we were younger,” she says. She does not recall paper notes at all: “I have not written such notes since the fifth grade”.