Analyzing the Impact of Social Media on Writing Skills of Students

This essay examines the profound impact of social media on the writing skills of students, exploring both positive and negative influences. It delves into how platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram affect grammar, language usage, and academic performance. The study reviews existing literature, including research by Roth et al. (2016), Ahn (2011), and Gerbaudo (2018), to analyze the effects of online communication on student writing. The essay discusses the shift in writing styles, the use of abbreviations and slangs, and the challenges faced by students in academic writing. It highlights the concerns of educators regarding the erosion of grammar and critical thinking skills due to the increased reliance on social media. The paper concludes by emphasizing the need for a balanced approach to social media usage to maintain and improve writing skills.

Running head: IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON WRITING SKILLS
Impact of social media on writing skills
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON WRITING SKILLS
Abstract
With the rapid rate of the booming technology, from year to the years, the younger
generations of the people are caught in the rapid change. This journal will shed light on the
current platform of the social media that had been one of the changing and the global factor
towards the impact or the effect of the writing skills and the grammar. The purpose of this
study is to explore how the social media of the digital domain influence the writing skills and
how they are negatively affecting the writing skills of the students.

2IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON WRITING SKILLS
Table of Contents
1.1 Introduction..........................................................................................................................3
2.1 Literature review..................................................................................................................4
2.3 Social Media’s impact on the writing skills of the students in the domain of their
academics...............................................................................................................................5
2.4 Effect of social media on the writing skills......................................................................6
3.1 Discussion............................................................................................................................7
4.1 Interpretation......................................................................................................................10
5.1 Conclusion..........................................................................................................................11
References................................................................................................................................13

3IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON WRITING SKILLS
1.1 Introduction
In the current day, it is important to identify and determine the effects or the impacts
of the social media on the academic performance that is the writing skills of the students in
the school and the colleges. With the rapid rate of the booming technology, from year to the
years, the younger generation of the people are caught in the rapid change of the writing
skills. In the context of the writing skills of the students or the pupils in the classroom, it can
be stated that there has been one of the major changes in the pattern of the language
evolution. This includes the deterioration of the grammar because of the increased use of
social media. There lie some of the major differences of the grammar in the English language
depending on the developing alteration and the changes in the grammar. This journal article
will focus on the current platform of the social media that had been one of the changing and
the global factor towards the impact or the effect of the writing skills and the grammar.
With the increase in the technological changes, the social media can undeniably have
some most of the negative impacts on the grammar, writing skills which are furthermore
dependable on the individual and his or her scheme of the grammar. The creation of social
media in the digital platform has brought a huge change among the people of the 20th century
in terms of their regular writing patterns both in an academic and nonacademic platform
(Mingle & Adams, 2015). The purpose of this study is to explore how the social media of the
digital domain influence the writing and how they are affecting the writing skills of the
students. The study notes the use of social media sites like the facebook, the twitter, the
tumbler and Instagram for reviewing the usage and the languages used by the people to
express their feelings at the WebPages.

4IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON WRITING SKILLS
2.1 Literature review
The social networking sites are generally popular among the generation of the
younger age throughout the world in the current decade. These serve as the online platform
for the people for the creation of their own profile for the aim of interaction with the people
all over the world thus influencing the writing pattern. As per the study and the illustration of
the Roth et al. (2016) the social networking sites generally tend to provide the platform for
the interaction that helps or enables the users of the websites into communication with their
friends and their families or any of the strangers they have met online for the establishment of
social relations via their communication and writing skills in the online chat forum.
The following section will illustrate the literature review on the social media and its uses.
Allam and Elyas (2016) define facebook and some of the other social network sites as
the dictionary in the online platform that aims to allow the people to find and interact with
people. Neier and Zayer (2015) stated that the young generation or the teens throughout the
world spend the time on the social media as the entertainment media which is basically more
than twice than the average amount of their time spent in the school in each of the years.
Miller et al. (2016) believe that the technology generally offers a platform for the innovation
and allows the users of the technology towards the effective expression of their opinions,
feelings and the information for publishing. This study is connected to the factor of the effect
of social media towards negatively affect the writing skills of the student who tend to prefer
more time on the platform of social media.
Kirschner and Karpinski in their research paper illustrate the new term by Wim Vee,
the Homo Zappiens which is basically referred to the learners of the current and the
upcoming generation. The process of Metacognitive skills is discovery-based learning
highlighting the unclear bond of the young generation with technological innovations. June

5IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON WRITING SKILLS
Ahn in her research paper discusses the theory of signaling referring how the individuals in
the social media present themselves and develop their identities and build trust with each
other (Ahn, 2011). This study illustrates how the effect of social media adversely affect the
writing skills and the communication of the students.
2.3 Social Media’s impact on the writing skills of the students in the domain of
their academics
Van Iddekinge et al. (2016) in their research paper stated that the usage of the online
communication and social media has both positive and negative effects since there are some
of the harmful ways that can be induced by the usage of the internet by the people of the
current generation. Lu, Hao, and Jing (2016) believe that there are more negative impacts of
the use and the access of the social media that the positive ones like development or the
access of the fruitful information from the internet on the global domain. The negative effects
include access to inappropriate contents on the internet and not undergoing the privacy
policy. The research study by Omoera et al. (2018) furthermore states how his research
findings state that more than 59% of the academic counselors believe on the worse impact of
the social media on the writing skills due to the frequent use of the word abbreviations and
online slangs. The researcher furthermore illustrated in his findings how teachers of certain
state schools believe in the negative impact of the social media on the face to face
communication skills of the individual and the critical thinking skills of the individual in the
current decade.
Apart from the positive impact of the social media of the enhancement of the
understanding of the individual by the engagement with the others and influence of the
creative through the process of the blogging and the opportunity to the individual for the
improvement of their learning efficiently, there lies most of the negative factors of the

6IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON WRITING SKILLS
increasing rate of technological innovation and engagement of the current generation in the
social media sites (Velliaris, Willis &Breen, 2015).
2.4 Effect of social media on the writing skills
As per the study of the Gerbaudo (2018), the effects of social media on
communication and the writing skills are getting worse day by day. This section shows the
negative effect of the social media furthermore including opinion and personal support of the
ideas. According to his insight, the interaction in the chat room has always been less effective
for the development and the learning of the language than the face to face oral interactions.
This is because moderate and leisurely typing tends to hinder the production of the language,
the negotiation, the collaboration and the noticing in a considerable range. With the essential
characteristics of the inherent visuality of the online chat room, it is noted that that the
conversation in the chat room exhibit the features of both the written and the spoken
languages.
As per the research study by Wollscheid, Sjaastad and Tømte (2016) the chat or the
conversation takes place in the writing medium like the spoken language specifically the
speech that is unplanned in nature and is generally consist of the incomplete, shorter and
grammatically simple and incorrect sentences that furthermore tends to have typographical
errors. Davis III et al. (2015) in his research study furthermore states the exercise of the
mastery of the norms and the tools of the communication among which most of them are not
appropriate for the online educational context. Kim, Li, and Brymer(2016) in his report
published how more than 80% of the online data published in the internet platform are not at
all academically appropriate and are very fewer words in length. Roth et al. (2016) in his
research study founded and elaborated the nature of the conversation of the online social
media sites where the users have the tendency to omit the articles, pronouns and the copulas
and use short abbreviations for initiating the communication in a fun mode. The use of the

7IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON WRITING SKILLS
misspelled words, the spellings by the replacement of the normal words and the terminology
in the language is one of the definite causes for the alarming of the hindering of the ability of
the students and the children for the effective communication through the means of
appropriate medium of writing while initiation of developing and formatting academic
papers, drafts , essays and other literary prose (Chang& Lu, 2018).
3.1 Discussion
Students and the people of all the generation are saliently being driven to the
engagement of the social networking. The utilization of the tool of social networking towards
its disadvantages has always been considered and noted by several of the researchers (Curran,
Fenton& Freedman, 2016). This section of the paper will illustrate the various data collected
from the secondary resources to analyze the negative effects or the impacts of the platform or
the rampant use of social media on the writing skills. As per the research findings of the
research study by Boyle et al. (2016) it has almost been more than 40 years since the teaching
and the initiation of the improvement of the writing skills in the school for the pupils has had
a major shift. With the invention of the Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, blogs and the wikis, the
new pattern of the writing styles has been redirected to the academic platform which is not at
all correct (Zheng, Yim & Warschauer, 2018). The changing of the writing is basically
underscored by the national council of teachers of English who participated in the publication
for the new literacy for the readers and the writers of the 21st century. Even though the use of
the social media and other related online platform sites receives both positive and negative
criticism it is basically arguable by many of the researchers in their research study that social
media is one of the most un-trusted sources for the information. It does not help the educators
of the school in regards to the literacy and the writing skills. As per the analysis of the Ainin
et al. (2015) the attraction of social media is an ambiguous factor for the individual who is
over thirty-five years including the college faculty and effects in a negative manner.

8IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON WRITING SKILLS
McCoy (2016) on the other hand stated that the literacy and the writing practices that
do not meet the needs or the requirements of the traditional academic writing in the platform
of the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other non academic blogs and posts can be
threatening since students tend to speak to their social media accounts instead of being
involved in the classroom discussions. It has been found by several secondary research
findings that the students and the younger generation in the current decade tends to adapt to
the misused wordings, grammatical errors and the unprofessional writings from the social
media websites and implement on their academic writings of the class thus harming their
habits of writing skills (Damant & Knapp, 2015). In the case of the people of aged
generation, the tendency of the misuse and adverse effect of the writing skills and the
knowledge is quietly lower in number as compared to the younger generation.
As per the findings of secondary researches and the government publications and the
new, social media tends to offer an advantage to the people in the comparison towards
writing with pen and paper. The platform of the social media tends to offer the advantage of
being accessed from multiple locations which furthermore has the chances to improve the
possibility of the writing being misplaced or lost (Van Iddekinge et al., 2016). The platform
or the tool of the social media can help in improving the writing skills since it allows the
students for accessing their writing in the more efficient and clear way allowing them for
better tracking their writings over time in a place.
Most of the errors that the educators and the instructors found as per the secondary
research studies are not occasional errors or findings in the student paper but frequent ones.
Some of the main issues found in most of the studies are finding the deal with the grammar,
spellings, paragraph structures, and the sentence structures and the formality (Yim &
Warschauer, 2017). Though these issues that have been identified are evident and as per most
of the studies the social media actually boost the literacy of the youth of the current

9IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON WRITING SKILLS
generation since the platform helps in boosting up the knowledge enabling them to learn
more about the world.
Along with the increased readings among the people of the current generation, the
blogs, the social media are also in the run of acceleration of increasing creativity. The study
conducted by The National Literacy Trust depicted more than 57% of the people who are
engaged in active blogging and participation in the online social media websites enjoy
writing more with their increasing and developing level of creativity as compared to the
individuals who do not actively participate in the social media. This is because these people
felt more confident and engaged in expressing their feelings and thought via their writing and
believed themselves to be independent creative writers. As per the Sigala and Chalkiti (2015),
the engagement of the social media is helping in an increase in the creativity in the students.
Along with the increasing interaction of the users the blogs and the social media are
increasing the creativity among them.
One of the issues in this context as found from the findings from the studies e that the
sites are not encouraging proper usage of the grammar. One of the rising example in this
context is the platform of Twitter which only allows the posting of 140 characters resulting
the user to finish off as the incomplete sentences and run –on and fragmented sentences in the
social media platform. As per certain research studies, the short character count is leading
towards shorter attention span in case of the reading and writing and in the long run is
affecting the ability for writing the correct sentences (Piotrowski, 2015). This furthermore
leads to the user to adapt to poor choice of words. The young generation of the decade tends
to adopt the shorthand of the slangs and the abuses of the internet and the projected
abbreviations for keeping the text short. This practice has led most of the students to use it
their academic platform and among the formal writing.

10IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON WRITING SKILLS
Spelling and incorrect grammatical formation are one of the common occurrences that
induce the problem of the shorthand communication among the users of the social media
platform. Studies also found the issue related to the capitalization and the inappropriate use of
the nouns.
Formality is another of the issue since the students in the current generation have been
reported to write their formal papers in a more casual tone and note. As per the current study
people in the current generation who are engaged in the social media platform do not use
complete sentences and were using shorthand approaches in the formal writings they initiate.
This furthermore relates to the issues of the writing skills related to the grammar and the
tense problem (Ainin et al., 2015). The short handwriting practices of the current generation
are decreasing the tone and the attitude together with the quality of the paper and the writing
making them unacceptable and un-relatable for the professional and academic writing. Even
though the social media is on an increasing note in regards to the small talk communications
it is greatly affecting the habits of both the young and the older generation and their academic
domain.
4.1 Interpretation
The findings and the analysis of the collected data from the various sources and the
research study of various researchers show that most of the people of the current generation
use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Face-Talk, and other social media platforms as
their favorite social networking sites and most of the users who are already engaged in this
platform tend to spend more than three to four hours on the sites (Allam&Elyas, 2016). The
findings depicted how the platform of the social media is used for both the academic and non-
academic purposes and there lies both benefits and certain drawbacks of the use of social
media. As per the current topic of study, social media has both positive and adverse effects

11IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON WRITING SKILLS
on the writing skills of the people of the current generation. The people write in short form in
the social networking sites while chatting and initiating a conversation which highly reflects
on their formal writings and speaking (Mingle & Adams, 2015). However, the analysis
furthermore highlighted how the digital social media motivates the students of the tertiary
level for improving the English as the findings depict that the people in the current generation
are very conscious regarding their perfectionist attire in the platform of social media.
However, it has also been found that the platform of the social media motivates the students
for improving their speaking and writing skills when assisted by an educator for learning new
words, phrases, idioms and the power of the presentation for enhancing the speaking and the
writing skills. However, in the current times, the educators of the school are also the active
users of the social networking sites which furthermore help the society to be more active in
socialize and learn and develop their knowledge (Miller et al., 2016). Though the platform of
the social media helps in connecting the users with the rapidly changing world and the
technology by learning new things each and every moment, the use of the short forms of the
writing of the posts and the blogs and the day to day presentations is the effect of the social
media platform. As per the research studies published in the current decade, the people in the
current scenario are keen towards the effective use of social networking sites for their
academic and daily writing habits.
This academic research journal is a pathway for further research and further
researches in this field can do in-depth research regarding the influence of the online platform
of digital media in some of the other context.
5.1 Conclusion
Thus it can be concluded that the effect or the impact of the social media on
communication and the writing skills has the tendency of the grey matter. The social