How would your life be affected if there were no social media? Without some sort of social networking, somewhat dramatic differences would be seen when compared to today. Teenagers wouldn’t be seen texting their friends, a large chunk of people would lose something they consider a source of income, and forms of long distance communication would reduce to those of simpler times such as writing and sending letters between each other. Social media has become a prominent part of society for people of all ages recently, but especially for those of younger ages. The question is whether this is a positive or negative change. Social media has helped our ability to communicate effectively because of the improvement of our literacy capabilities and the benefits of connections made between people all over the globe.

With social media comes opportunities to meet people from vastly different parts of the world whom you may never have met without social media. This cultural phenomenon even makes finding friends with common interests easier and makes it more likely to make genuine friends rather than distant friendships with people that you are forced to spend hours in a classroom, workplace, etc. in together. Around a year ago, my best friend introduced me to her long distance girlfriend, whom she had met through Skype at the time. Perhaps that this was just the girl’s way of trying to get on my good side considering how close the relationship my friend and I was. Despite what I may have previously thought, the girl managed to become close to me in a short period of time, helped me through many rough patches, and knew more about me than most people I’ve known for years. Without Skype or social media in general, this girl would have never entered my friend’s life, nor my own. In many studies, it is found that high percentages of teens have met at least one of their friends online. Amanda Lenhart’s statistics used in Teens, Technology and Friendships on the “integral role” of social media state that a somewhat shocking “57% of teens ages 13 to 17 have made a new friend online”.
Not only does social media connect new people, but it also can be used to stay in touch with relatives or friends that could be miles away. Many families that have been split due to moving are able to communicate with platforms like Skype or Facetime. The program Skype has startling statistics of 3 billion minutes per day spent on the application and 2 trillion minutes used on video calls thus far. Social media can also cause friends that may live close to one another to communicate more and to communicate faster. Despite common belief and as stated in an Don't Fear the Network: The Internet Is Changing the Way We Communicate for the Better by Seth Masket, “social media has augmented, rather than undermined, our personal relationships” and has “[increased] the volume of contact” rather than eliminating certain aspects of it. For example, while students may talk at school and speak to each other in a more “traditional” way, they also can text or talk to each other on apps like Instagram, Facebook, etc.

While surprising, people are communicating and reading/writing as much, if not more than in previous times due to social media and its widespread popularity. If you were in a room of people, how many would you see on some sort of device? Most likely it would be the majority of the people in the room. It’s highly unlikely that all of these people are playing games on their phone so it’s reasonable to assume that they are texting or on a site like Twitter or Facebook. While it may not seem like much, these people are indeed reading and writing when they respond to someone or create a status or tweet. One may argue that the amount of “hashtags” and abbreviations that have come about are embroiling and slightly aggravating and therefore have worsened our abilities to communicate. However, with these new abbreviations and “hashtags” come new words that our different cultures have created and clever phrases or small scripts of text that are written in the limited characters allowed on some social media platforms. Ethna Dempsey Lay in an Why Can’t Johnny Write? Don’t Blame Social Media by Lance Ulanoff says that she does not see inferior writing but instead ”she sees, in tweets, for example, a ‘sense of other quality to the way’ these students write.’” While not all of what is written is nothing more than what is seen on the surface, “‘you can get a lot of thought in 140 characters.’” Not only does social networking increase the amount of meaning in a smaller piece of text because of size limiting, but it also increases the awareness of one’s mistakes. In 5 ways that social media benefits writing and language, Mallary Jean Tenore discusses a South by Southwest panel concerning the “ways in which social media is strengthening the English language”. Knowing that your post “is potentially going to reach thousands of people can be a good incentive to proofread”. The likelihood that someone will point out your mistake if one is made is rather high as well with society nowadays. This way of social networking etiquette is sort of like this generation’s spellcheck.

While social media may seem unnatural to some, it has positively affected our ability to communicate effectively through its literacy and connection benefits. It perhaps may even be a better alternative to common pastimes. Social networking even tends to “[supplant] time spent watching television rather than time spent on other forms of social life” as stated by Wellman in Seth Masket’s aforementioned opinion editorial. With social platforming and its widespread use comes many benefits and changes to life that are made with each passing generation. With social media should come an understanding and embracing of its alterations and we should in the future make an effort to do such.