Effects of Social Media on Writing Skills
Social media is now part of everyday life. Children are becoming familiar with, and interact on social media at an early age. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines social me as ‘forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and micro-blogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos)’. So, as people use and enjoy the Internet, are we sacrificing our ability to read, write, and think? In his book ‘What the Internet is doing to our brains?’ Nicholas Carr posed the question ‘Is Google making us stupid? With the introduction of social media into our lives, we have to wonder what effect does the social media have on writing skills. As it turns out, social media can have both positive and negative effect on our writing skills.
What if we were told that using social media could actually make us better writers? New research out of the U.K. has found that using social media can actually improve one’s ability to read and write coherently. The study, issued by the UK's Department of Education, shows that using "textisms" on social sites doesn't affect the teen’s communication development’and in fact, those who texted the most were "significantly better writers." While technology has certainly advanced itself and become a fundamental aspect of life, there are still harmful effects that negatively influence students’ writing skills.
Teachers know that social media can be negative, but if used properly, students can use social media to improve their writing skills. Smart teachers are finding that social media effects on students can be positive and they are taking full advantage of the benefits.
The classroom is quickly changing as social media becomes part of our daily life. It can no longer be kept out of the classroom. Teachers can use this technology in a positive way and give their students the tools they need to communicate through the written word.
When Nicholas Carr posed the question ‘Is Google making us stupid?’, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also ignited one of the important debates of our time. Now, Carr describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by ‘tools of the mind”from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer. He makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic’a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting creative thought.
Angela Risto, in her "The Impact of Texting and Social Media on Students' Academic Writing Skills", describes how there is fear that students will draw upon their most frequently utilized form of texting and social media, for their sentence patterns, grammar, punctuation, and word choice. A survey of 2,462 Advanced Placement (AP) and National Writing Project (NWP) teachers finds that digital technologies are shaping student writing in many ways and have also become helpful tools for teaching writing to middle and high school students. These teachers see the Internet and digital technologies such as social networking sites generally facilitating teens’ personal expression and creativity. The Pew Research Center found that more than half of online adults used two or more social media sites in 2015’a 10 percent increase from 2014.
‘There’s a big disconnection going on here that’s very real for some people,’ Dr. Kate Roberts, a Boston-based school psychologist, told the Deseret News. ‘When people aren’t using face-to-face contact for personal issues, it doesn’t fill the intimacy need. For all the strong reaction out there about Twitter and Facebook allowing emotional expression, it’s not necessarily effective. You’re not necessarily getting to a resolution.’ Prolonged periods of time on social media begin to impact behavior and feelings. Social media sites help users reflect on their own lives, thus highlighting photos and posts that are shared with their friends. People are quick to post the places they’re visiting and the funny things they’re doing in the hopes of getting some kind of encouragement from others in the form of a Like or tweet. ‘Facebook is all about sharing and liking with friends and family,’ said Mike Berland, a strategic adviser and CEO of Edelman-Berland, in a recent Adweek article. ‘Those are all elements of gratitude.
Kathleen A. Bronowicki stated that ‘The evolving world of technology is negatively influencing students’ writing skills and, therefore, strategies aligned to the Common Core Learning Standards need to be implemented in the classroom.’ Throughout generations, writing has been one of the primary channels of communication. Over the course of history, the method through which writing is conveyed has changed; however, the goal has remained the same: to actively and effectively communicate information in a clear manner. Before computers, the writing process was much different. In the National Council of Teachers of English, Kathleen Yancey reports that writing was first represented by ‘the physical difficulty of inscribing alphabetic characters on a surface; pencils weren’t widely available until the early part of the twentieth century, which was forty years before the invention of the ballpoint pen; how messy and sloppy it was to try to compose in ink that dripped all over the page- and then smudged (2).’
Since technological tools and applications have come into play, teachers are dealing with problematic writing issues. Between texting and relying on Microsoft Word programs to do the work for them, students are ‘changing the nature of the English language’ and relying on technology to ‘fix’ all of their writing errors (Bromley 103). While texting, students often use abbreviated words, letters, and symbols to stand for specific words, and neglect correct English capitalization and punctuation forms. Additionally, the nature of text messaging creates a sense of laziness in students, blocking their ability to work through a challenge and stay focused on a task. Students do not truly comprehend the writing process because they are depending on these programs to do the job for them without putting any effort into understanding why certain corrections are made (Salter 2274). This is shown further when Madden and Laurence indicate that over the past twenty years, there has been a significant gap and decrease in students’ writing skills (3-4). Due to the cultural changes and developments, students today rely on technology for too many tasks. As of now, technology is continuing to grow and students’ writing skills are remaining on the decline. Professors of colleges and authority figures within the career world are seeing a sharp decline in individuals’ writing skills (Rothman 10-11). The overall use of the English language is either being forgotten, or simply not being taken into consideration. According to Mara Corey, an Advanced Placement writing teacher at Irondale High School in Minneapolis, reports that there has been a ‘decline in students’ writing skills over the past thirteen years, as students are not in deep conversation and prose as they once were’ (Post). What’s more, students are currently using abbreviations of words, misspellings, run-on sentences, and combinations of symbols, numbers, and letters in professional papers and assignments (Salter 2274). Nowadays, there is no attention to detail. This is simply because individuals rely too heavily on technology and social media to provide them with shortcuts or worse, do the job for them in its entirety.
Now more than ever, it is important for students to develop higher level writing skills Unfortunately, this generation of students does not see the value in being able to write well due to the multiple technological tools that often fail to support the writing process. As the global economy becomes more and more competitive, with jobs that are few and far in between, students’ writing skills are decreasing at a quick rate. Some of this stems directly from the lack of writing instruction in schools. Unfortunately, the precise writing skills that are necessary for success in college and in careers are not always being taught; moreover, students have a simple approach toward writing, with a mindset that technology can ‘fix’ the spelling and grammatical errors for them. This student mindset makes it highly difficult for teachers to demonstrate the importance of writing in a more professional and challenging ways. For example, in a study conducted at George Washington University, ‘first year undergraduates reported that the most frequently assigned high school writing tasks required them to offer and support opinions, with a secondary emphasis on summarizing and synthesizing information’ (Carnegie Mellon). Skills such as criticizing or defining a problem, and developing a solution are not practiced enough in current day education, yet these are the very skills that are essential for success in college and in the workplace. This prevents students from writing using their critical thinking skills. Therefore, students continue to view writing as creative and opinion-based, which is not what college professors and managers in the workplace look for in professional writing. Opinion-based writing, creative writing, and writing using a form of technology do not allow students to actively struggle with information or challenge their thinking (Carnegie Mellon). This lack of effort is clearly due to an increased reliance on technology to do the work and, as a result, a lack of effective and explicit writing practices in the classroom (Purcell, Buchanan, and Friedrich 37). While many students are not writing enough in schools, both teachers and students are not placing an emphasis on specific writing techniques that are most important. Commonly observed, students place a greater emphasis on penmanship and spelling, rather than focusing on their overall structure, content validity, ample evidence, and the writing process (Straub and Alias 17).
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