Social media, texting and e-mail have become a crucial part of our lives.

Studies have
shown that over 50% of the population uses some form of social media. Many people may say
they’re becoming more illiterate, but not everyone agrees with that statement.

Firstly, when texting, people tend to make many unnoticed grammatical errors. They
shorten words and use abbreviations and acronyms. They don’t focus on spelling the words
correctly. That happens because they’re usually in a rush to text someone back without
rereading their message. This causes chaos when these people are presented with tasks such as
writing an essay or an important speech on their own. They struggle with finding the right
words to use due to being contained in their own brain which has gotten used to using
abbreviations, not checking for errors in their texts and using a limited vocabulary.

On the other hand, many people seem to think that their constant texting may improve
their writing. Since social media is the most prominent literary material among teenagers, they
aren’t focusing on how correctly tweets and Instagram captions are written, but on the
message the people behind the posts are trying to convey. That may help their imagination,
but it doesn’t ameliorate their bad writing and spelling.

In conclusion, texting and using social media makes people more illiterate without them
even knowing. Nevertheless, I still think that people could improve their spelling if they focus
more on reading books than reading tweets.

Suzana Amadea Unger, 2.d