Google Docs - a favorite chat among students

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

Not surprisingly, Google Docs became popular with American students: “As students get more and more laptops in middle and high school, 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 teachers, ” writes The Atlantic .

Thus, students can communicate with each other right under the nose of a teacher 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 among students. If you are 20, then you are already old for such entertainment.


Teenagers say they use Google Docs to chat anytime they have to remove their 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 take advantage of the fact that Google allows users to highlight certain phrases or words and then comment on them through the pop-up window on the right side: they clone the teacher’s common Google document and then communicate in the comments, so it seems to the random viewer that they just take notes about lesson plan. If the teacher comes closer, they can click the "Allow" button, and the whole stream will disappear.


If the project is not collaborative, the children simply create a common document where they communicate 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 introduces herself as anyone like all other teens of her age. - I had one very good friend, and in that lesson we were in different classes. Therefore, we sent each other an e-mail document and just chatted about what was happening. " At the end of the lesson, they simply delete the document or allow all comments.


Chatting through Google Docs doesn't just fool teachers; he also deceives 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 Reddit said in a February thread , chatting through Google Docs is also a great way to get around the parental ban on social networks.

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

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

If Google Docs is not used in the classroom, the children will find use for any other collaboration program that their teachers recommend. For example, the online version of Microsoft Word has 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. “So we just draw pictures with a highlighter and upload memes to a shared folder,” says 16-year-old Nathan from Philadelphia. According to him, he and his classmates happily discovered the functionality of group messaging last year, but the disadvantage of chats is that if you chat a lot, the work will not be done.


While Google Docs is popular for communication in the middle and high school, most teenagers refuse it as soon as they get to college, writes The Atlantic . Boston, a 20-year-old Skye in the suburbs of Boston, says her memory of chats at Google Docs made her nostalgic: “Chatting at Google Docs is very similar to when we were younger,” she says. The girl never recalls paper notes: “I have not written such notes since the fifth grade.”