Why do so many young people begin a question with the word OK or So?

They write the way they speak. Many conclusions can be drawn from the writing on this site, and most are depressing. Our schools are nightmares, due in part to parenting that allows poor behavior in school, little effort to learn, and little support of faculty. There are a few bright ones in the bulbs asking questions, often the Askers who have a different first language. I just tell myself that almost all of the good students can and do figure it out without Yahoo!Answers. Otherwise, I would be hysterical about the funding of my social security. ;-)

You are absolutely correct. I am 19 and I completed high school last year and I can honestly say that the only time I learned anything that was valuable in grammar was in Junior and Senior AP English courses. In general most learn NOTHING about proper sentence structure, essay composition, or basic grammar.

You forgot to use the serial comma after "vocabulary" and your comma before "in our schools" is incorrect.

I have read enough high school and college papers to know that schools aren't doing a very good job teaching English, but I'm tired of older generations pretending that this is a generational problem.

Exhibit A. *points to you*

Those people are writing as if they would speak it in real life. And they start their questions or sentences with OK/So/Like probably because they are not sure of themselves. They might be thinking "How would I come across, if I convey my thoughts directly?"

You see, with all the school budget cuts- kids began to make up their own dialects. We also have alot of east europeans on here.

Grow up! I'm sick of people like you complaining about the poor education now and how nobody uses "proper" English anymore. You aren't perfect and many of YOUR generation can't use the language "properly" either.

Language changes anyway and if 'so' and 'ok' are used in those ways commonly enough the denoted functions of those words will adapt. That is how language works.

Meaning does not control use, use controls meaning. Understand?

Habit. It gives them a chance to think. Others say, "well" or "a". If they take a public speaking class, the teacher should break them of the habit.

dfgdgfd

it's just a trend

You are to old to understand