I'm also in the under 30 group and "text speak" is a waste. There's just no reason not to type the extra few letters. Its laziness pure and simple. The well-known ones like LOL are different, but just misspelling words because its shorter seems pretty lazy to me. I can type upwards of 60 words a minute, like I really don't have time for those few extra letters? and I don't think being able to type that fast is anything special for my generation. (but then again there's me being lazy and starting a sentence with and...)