The Influence of Social Media Platforms on the Literacy Level of Their Users

Abstract

Popular social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Linkedln, Facebook and others have become very popular among youngsters. People, particularly, the youth spend a huge part of their time on these platforms and they not only get influenced by these websites in their writing styles, but also try to create coinages and shortened versions of the language on their own. Using abbreviations, for example,”U” for “ you “ , “ Txs” for “ thanks, “ NP” for “ for “ no problem” etc. has become commonplace in messaging. Some social media users even change grammatical structure of sentences. This article will try to explore the impact of using social media on student’s academic writing style as well as on grammar in the long run.