Impact of Social Media on the Linguistic Development of Teenager

1.0. Introduction

Social media plays a major influential role in the language development process of children
and the process of first language acquisition incorporates child’s ability to develop language.
The use of excessive social media is a major source that makes teenagers to be dependent to
language use and social media exposure which technically has the ability to develop language
skills immediately among teenagers (Subrahmanyam et al, 2001). The use of social media in
daily life and spending excessive time chatting with friends and family members is regarded
to be one of the aspects that are reported to play major role in development of language
among teenagers. The reported statistics suggest that teenagers spend excessive time in
Internet chat rooms with friends and using instant messaging software have creates major
impact on the language development skills of children.

This essay is about discussion of the way social media impacts the language development
skills of teenagers. The critical evaluation will help to know the extent teens lose the ability
to have formal interactions which is the main reason they lose major job opportunities
especially for employment terms and this majorly impacts the language skills among
teenagers.

2.0. Literature Review

Social media has direct impact on the language development of teenagers and the online
world has created major complications in the lives of teenagers. Teens due to excessive use of
Facebook, Twitter or MySpace which are the trending social media sites have created major
problems over the open and honest language development skills. Teenagers are experiencing
a total-life makeover and they face major complications as the communication skills are not
quite effective and social media boundaries have been one of the complicated issues which
cannot be dealt easily. Learning is a crucial phase and especially for teenagers it is functions
as receptive and productive for linguistic development skills (Park et al, 2009). Language
acquisition process and exposure is something which in child’s man is unconsciously
considered to be an aspect where the interactions in day-to-day experiences create a crucial
activity and needs immediate requirements where language exposure is something that
requires careful attention.
Teenagers have great impact of media and this makes them more inclined towards the use of
social networking site. These website have been a great influencing source and significant
way which forms a part of teenagers to have effective vocabulary learning process with live
social interactions. The exposure to social media especially for teenagers is a source which
makes them to receive linguistic input and contributes towards their language development
skills (Boyd, 2007). There has been an investigation done on observing ways social media
exposure develops language skills among teenagers. The results reveal that excessive
exposure of teenagers show that social media has strong impact over the vocabulary
development which basically is the power influence among young children.

Teenagers learn more from social media and there is excessive passive vocabularies observed
in interaction of teenagers. The impact of social media exposure has direct impact on
teenagers and their language development. The support of language development especially
for vocabulary is a big risk and also teens usually learn wrong words which are also a major
negative impact on linguistic development (Lam, 2000). The vocabulary acquisition process
among teenagers is slow and has a strong impact on teenagers especially the vocabulary
acquisition process is not easy to manage. Teenagers show poor social competence which
means that social media interactions have limited the responding sense among teenagers and
they tend to be more passivized. There are poor daily experiences found among teenagers as
they learning process is quite slow due to social media usage in their daily life.

Teenagers due to excessive use of social media have strong impact on the content and there is
need to handle the modern world and changes. This shows that social media has strong
impact over the use of language among teenagers and their narrative sense is vanishing and
also the skills for retelling stories misses the option which requires the essential components
over literacy. The essential components show that the style presentation for teenagers to
acquire new vocabulary by social media indicates that there is development needed to handle
the literacy skills and also have better comprehension (Shirky, 2011). Teenagers show that
they have poor verbal interaction skills such as commenting and questioning which happens
between young children and parents even teenagers who consider this to be one of the
negative influences due to social media. There are many contractions used by social media
which is something that shows questioning and commenting aspects to dominate among
teenagers and their language development is risked because they have low responses towards
using grammatically correct sentences.
In similar situation, social media has exposed students more too non-educational programs
which show that there is decrease in reading and learning activities. This also shows that
vocabulary development impacts among teenagers at a rapid pace because they are more
focused on using contractions such as ‘You are’ becomes ‘U’R’, ‘Tomorrow’ is spelled as
‘tmrw’, ‘to’ is written as ‘2’ and this reflects also in the educational patterns because
teenagers lack formal interactions. This idea leads towards lack of ability among teenagers to
produce grammatically correct sentences and also spellings (Kaplan et al, 2010). Teenagers
are more inclined towards the use of passive vocabularies and different studies have increase
in focus over the teenagers and their position because the language development and
vocabularies have a major negative impact associated with live interactions.

Preliminary researches have also revealed that teenagers have more impact by TV media
which show that social media sources along with TV develop raw vocabularies and they are
not able to refine their language skills. Teenagers try to imitate the language being used on
social media which makes their permanent habit to copy the way language is being presented
on the social sites and this interactive context is basically the major reason teens show poor
linguistic skills (Pfeil et al, 2009). The research conducted in United States to observe the
impact of social media on language development of teenagers by examination of Facebook
site reveals that 93% of teenagers in United States have been influenced by social media
which results them to daily create new words and symbols in order to communicate with
friends online.

Teenagers only prefer chats which acts as a major communication medium and they are not
having strong linguistic development skills which make it difficult to confront people over
their communication and vocabulary development phase. There are certain teenagers who
have more focus on to use social media which creates poor command on linguistic
development skills. There is missing option to have positive messages to be sent and
linguistic development aspect is missing because social media exposure increases the use of
shortened words, slang and abbreviated words while emotions have been replaced by
emoticons which show that teenagers are being trapped in virtual world and it limits their
language development skills.
Teenagers tend to restrict the use of language development while social media considers that
many teenagers use explicit language while interacting. There is foul language development
increasing among teenagers and this is a major issue and complication faced due to excessive
usage of social media sites. Teenagers lack formal language skills rather it is seen that
teenagers tend to use more obscene language and also they do not fear from elders to use
such type of language (Grabe et al, 2008). The innate vocabulary development skills among
teenagers are missing and isolation prevails which is because the blogs and sites promote
language which is inappropriate for teenagers to learn. The exposure of teenagers towards
social media makes them lack learning skills as they are more focused on facilitation of
imitation which basically is something that requires careful attention. Teenagers are heavily
dependent on the casual language development skills.

A study regarding the impact of instant messaging on social media suggests that there is
surprisingly increase in use of short forms such as ‘u’ for ‘you’ and ‘ttyl’ for ‘talk to you
later’ and while working in class they prefer to use these short forms in their exams. The
results show that linguistically students are being influenced by social media which lacks the
ability to produce grammatically correct sentences and there is missing way of sending
correct messages (Reinhardt et al, 2011). Teachers also state that they consider formal writing
to be quite complicated and probably the texting is something which destroys the ability of
teenagers to learn. It is probably true those teenagers who have more impact as heavy readers
and generations ago there is strong influence over the blow at the culture while the reason
behind this is the change which expectedly should manage the literacy level.

The excessive use of social media provides remarkable options for increasing literacy level
and to be creative as well as competent. The young people lack positive options and also
there are chances when sense of authenticity makes communication difficult to handle and
create powerful meaning by the use of social media. The arguments suggest that parents can
act as a useful source to encourage children to spend more time in reading and not to stick on
social media sites because this obsession has negatively impact the language development
skills (Huffaker et al, 2005). The online use of social media lacks connection and blogging
communities which make teenagers to lack grip on their language. The negative association
between the uses of social media exposure shows poor language development skills.
Teenagers regarding the social media impacts negatively which show that there are
deleterious effects over the language effects use especially while comprehension and
recognition to have negative effect on social media excessive usage.

Social media and electronic sources create major impact on academic performance while
teenagers are reported to have weak linguistic competencies only because they are
excessively engaged in social communications and also these results in poor academic
performance. The communication skills among teenagers show that learn and practice skills
ensure that there is engaging requirements needed in order to motivate teenagers to use skill
development (Buckingham, 2013). Teenagers are basically more shy and reserved to follow
the classroom engaging features such as to produce correct sentences linguistically. Social
media is one of the major sources which negatively impact the vocabulary development skills
among teenagers. There is increase in poor linguistic development among teenagers only
because they prefer to use informal language more in their conversations.

3.0. Conclusion

Social media sites have their own pros and cons but as far as linguistic development among
teenagers is concerned there is a wide gap observed. The reason is informality level which is
more in social media language usage and this dramatically increases the risk of having better
linguistic skills. People who spend more time on social media especially teenagers have
revealed that there are majority of teenagers to show poor academic performance. This
number is growing rapidly over the passage of time and social media sites only have been a
distraction and poor contributors for linguistic development. This essay reveals that teenagers
have made their language development to be quite complicated which show that there is
major self-regulation and susceptibility issues due to exposure of teens on social media.
However, the linguistic skills can be developed by limiting the exposure of teenagers towards
social networking sites in order to create social awareness among the masses and technology
lacks developing the online issues in order to handle concerns among teens for linguistic
development and use programmes which will help promote productive linguistic skills.

References

Boyd, D., 2007. Why youth (heart) social network sites: The role of networked publics in
teenage social life. MacArthur foundation series on digital learning–Youth, identity, and
digital media volume, pp.119-142.
Buckingham, D., 2013. Media education: Literacy, learning and contemporary culture. John
Wiley & Sons.

Grabe, S., Ward, L.M. and Hyde, J.S., 2008. The role of the media in body image concerns
among women: a meta-analysis of experimental and correlational studies. Psychological
bulletin, 134(3), p.460.

Huffaker, D.A. and Calvert, S.L., 2005. Gender, identity, and language use in teenage
blogs. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 10(2), pp.00-00.

Kaplan, A.M. and Haenlein, M., 2010. Users of the world, unite! The challenges and
opportunities of Social Media. Business horizons, 53(1), pp.59-68.

Lam, W.S.E., 2000. L2 literacy and the design of the self: A case study of a teenager writing
on the Internet. Tesol Quarterly, 34(3), pp.457-482.

Park, N., Kee, K.F. and Valenzuela, S., 2009. Being immersed in social networking
environment: Facebook groups, uses and gratifications, and social
outcomes. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 12(6), pp.729-733.

Pfeil, U., Arjan, R. and Zaphiris, P., 2009. Age differences in online social networking–A
study of user profiles and the social capital divide among teenagers and older users in
MySpace. Computers in Human Behavior, 25(3), pp.643-654.

Reinhardt, J. and Zander, V., 2011. Social networking in an intensive English program
classroom: A language socialization perspective. Calico Journal, 28(2), pp.326-344.

Shirky, C., 2011. The political power of social media: Technology, the public sphere, and
political change. Foreign affairs, pp.28-41.

Subrahmanyam, K., Greenfield, P., Kraut, R. and Gross, E., 2001. The impact of computer
use on children's and adolescents' development. Journal of Applied Developmental
Psychology, 22(1), pp.7-30.