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...who primarily teaches 9th graders...says that all of her e-mails now look like text messages- including those from students asking for help with homework or whatever else...and she finds it disrespectful and a disturbing trend.
I use chat speak the way it probably should be used.  To shorthand expressions that get siad a gazillion times like punctuation (in my humble opinion, for what it's worth, laughing out loud, thank you, talk to you later, I'll believe it when I see it, oh my goodness...things like this that get added to a thought to convey the emotion attached to the thought or an important addendum that in some other way conveys tone).  I don't use shorthand to REPLACE grammar and vocabulary though.  I might actually UNDER-use emoticons...I get complaints about that from time to time.
But I agree with the original post...net shorthand is not the next great root of evil. :)  People need to lighten up just a tiny bit.