Tim Allen is "completely oblivious" to modern text messaging.

The 71-year-old actor - who has Katherine, 35, with ex-wife Laura Deibel and Elizabeth, 15, with wife Jane Hajduk - admitted that he struggles with the "abbreviations" kids seem to use today and thinks even his own children might be "messing" with him when it comes to modern ways of communication.

He told TooFab: "What I am completely oblivious to is texting. I'm pretty good at it. I can't believe the abbreviations that we used to call Pig Latin when I was in elementary, or high school. And all the girls had this language and I never got that. Some of these, it's such a language that it will develop into a language and if any of these kids know, there's a couple of text strings that my daughters have given me that I really...I think they're messing with me! Why don't you just say that?!"

When the Hollywood star appeared in the sitcom 'Last Man Standing' in the early 2010s, he had to use a relatively old fashioned phone and his daughters were clueless as to what it was.

"On 'Last Man Standing', I told one of the girls that I was getting this new device where you poke in numbers and the other person's voice pops up. They go 'What?!' and I said 'Yeah, you just poke in these numbers, there's a bell...' and they said What is that?', I said 'It's called a telephone!'"

"I'm not sure what we're doing now...telephones are...my kids don't like calling people. I talked to them yesterday, and they said 'Why didn't you text?' Texting and talking are not the same!"