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Literally every day. Quick, without any other context what do I mean by that?
Contra your implied point, there's no actual way to tell just from my response whether I actually mean it happens to me each day of my life, or if I simply mean that it happens a lot. That's kinda the point of why people bitch about people butchering "literally". Meaning has been lost thanks to tolerating this nonsense.
Fair enough on this specific case; I'll allow that it's ambiguous. But I want to put the case of "literally" in the category of exaggeration or creative usage. You may as well complain that any figurative language can be ambiguous. Never use hyperbole! Never use metaphor! Never use sarcasm! Never use a colorful idiom! It might be unclear! I think this kind of misses the point. A better approach for a teacher would be to say: text your friends how ever you like, but if you use "literally" figuratively in a business email, you might come off as unserious, because it's not the norm.
The thing I think is tough about that is that one form of usage bleeds over into the other, because the language people use every day is what shapes their perception of what is acceptable. This reminds me of something I read about parenting, actually. Children are prone to misbehave, and teenagers even moreso than little kids. As a parent, you can't stop that pushing of boundaries. But the suggestion I read is that if you make the boundaries stricter than you think they should be, then when your kids push the boundaries they will still be in the realm of acceptable behavior.
It seems like a similar dynamic might be important in terms of teaching kids how to communicate properly. Like you said, people don't really care that much how kids text their friends. But by harping on how they should talk while they text their friends, you might be able to instill in them proper writing in more formal contexts. I don't know for sure. But it feels like there might be something there.
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