Parents need not worry — a new study contends that instant messaging and online chats actually help teens hone their linguistic abilities, rather than degrade them.

Parents often worry about the lack of grammar and the extensive use of often abbreviations like LOL, OMG and TTYL in SMSes - also known as instant messaging (IM).

But the study concludes that IM represents "an expansive new linguistic renaissance" evolving in GenNext kids.

Researchers at the University of Toronto have pointed out that teenagers risk familial censure and ridicule by friends if they use slang. But IM allows them to deploy a "robust mix" of colloquial and formal language.

They based their conclusions on an analysis of more than one million words of IM communications and a quarter of a million spoken words produced by 72 people aged 15 to 20.

The researchers argue that far from ruining teenagers’ ability to communicate, IM lets teenagers show off what they can do with language.

"IM is interactive discourse among friends that is conducive to informal language," said Derek Denis, co-author of the study. "But at the same time, it is a written interface which tends to be more formal than speech."

They found that although IM shared some of the patterns used in speech, its vocabulary and grammar tended to be relatively conservative.

For example, when speaking, teenagers are more likely to use the phrase "He was like, what’s up?’’ than "He said, ‘what’s up?’’ — but the opposite is true when they are instant-messaging. This supports the idea that IM represents a hybrid form of communication.

The findings of the study has been published in the spring issue of the journal American Speech.