YO, readers! How's it hanging? Things wicked? Giving it large? It's all kicking here at Echo Towers.

Okay, okay, I'll stop. I wasn't exactly overloaded with street cred as a teenager so it's pointless trying to get down with the kids at the age of 54.

But I was inspired at least to give it a try after reading about the new poster campaign warning youngsters of the dangers of surfing the internet.

What sets this latest initiative apart is the use of language.

It's in English... of a sort. But not the English of Milton and Shakespeare but "textese" - the code of abbreviations, numbers and symbols used by youngsters to bat messages back and forth on their mobile phones.

The best I can manage is: "Hi! How R U?" Or "Good 2 C U." Or occasionally "I Luv U. XXX" when I'm trying to get into my wife's good books.

But my daughter is an adept at the art of the text message. Thanks to "textese" - and its constantly expanding vocabulary - she can construct complex sentences and zap them over in a matter of seconds.

See if you can decode this one: "f NEfin maks u feel (:+( or uncomfortable on9 tel a responsible XXX str8 awy." (If anything makes you feel unhappy or uncomfortable online tell a responsible adult straight away.) If you're an English teacher you might well raise your eyes to heaven.

But even if you are, you'll probably agree that this is an ingenious method of squeezing a lot of information into a small space - especially that glum face for "unhappy".

Now try this one: "u av d ryt 2 feel safe ll d tym." (You have the right to feel safe all the time).

Both these examples come from the posters in the new campaign.

They're obviously designed to "speak" to youngsters in a language they'll understand. But I wonder just how effective they're going to be.

In my experience (and yes, I can just about remember my school days) youngsters are instinctively wary of grown-ups who try to ingratiate themselves by "speaking their language".

Textese, after all, is a product of youth culture. And the whole point of youth culture is that it develops as something apart from the world of grown-ups.

Youth culture, and the language that goes with it, therefore, belongs to youths, not adults.

They're notoriously protective of it - and quickly smell a rat, and feel patronised, when we wrinklies attempt to muscle in on it.

The Two Hughs - Punt and Dennis - picked up on this in their hilarious "embarrassing dad" routines.

These usually involved a teenager praying for the ground to open up and swallow him as his father shames him in front of his friends by pretending to share his taste in music.

They watch appalled as he breaks into a lumbering disco dance and cries out: "Hey! This has got a really good beat!"

Now don't misunderstand me. I wish the poster campaign well. If the use of "textese" in this way gets an important message over to at least some of the target audience then it's serving a useful purpose.

But I can't help but wonder whether it wouldn't be better just to spell out the message in good old-fashioned Anglo Saxon.

Kids don't need to be patronised. And they can smell an "embarrassing dad" at 100 yards.