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Positive And Negative Effects Of Social Media

Decent Essays

There is no denying that within the last ten years, most of our lives have been changed by the advent of multiple venues of social media. Friends are made, old friends found, enemies are made, stars are born, elections are won, lost and tampered with, all due to the invention of social media. Has this type of media has positively or negatively affected the written word? My first thought is that it has a negative net effect on the writing overall, but as I began to research the topic, I discovered that some experts think the opposite. When I speak of the written word, I am referring to both formal writing for educational purposes and writing within the social media format. What is social networking? “A social network is a dedicated website or application that allows people to communicate with others using profiles, messages, comments, and images. Social networks usually include a list of friends, allowing information to be provided only to the people a user chooses. Examples of social networks include Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.” (Wood) On the positive side, all writing is good, right? Well, it seems to be a consensus by professionals that this is a true statement. According to the Journal article written by Harris and Dilt, “The main issues that most studies are finding deals with spelling, grammar, sentence or paragraph structure, and formality.” Students appear to be making similar mistakes in their writing that might be due to the structure that they are writing the most in, social media. However, the overall opinion is that social media is contributing positively to students’ literacy. (Harris, Dilts). Furthermore, according to the same study, students’ creativity seems to be on the rise, with the increase in their social media usage, the authors of the study quote “The National Literacy Trust” has shown that out of 3,001 students surveyed 57% who actively blog or are on social media enjoy writing more than the students who are not active on social media.” Students who are active on social media, by blogging or posting and active on social media “write short stories, song lyrics, or keep a personal journal.”. (Harris/Dilt) Creativity and volume increase in writing are good things for students, but

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