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Emily Skinner

ENC 1101

Professor McGriff

March 05, 2019

Communication Problem
As a twenty-one year old living in 2019 I can wholeheartedly say that social media and

texting are negatively changing the way we communicate today. Others would argue that social

media and texting have actually improved our communication skills, saying they have increased

our capacity to communicate, changed our communication time for the better, and have brought

the world closer together. I believe texting and social media have decreased the value of words,

increased the speed of communication, and changed the way we respect our fellow human

beings.

Many writers believe social media has improved our communication skills. In his Ted

Talk ​Txting is killing Language. JK!!!,​ linguist John McWhorter says “texting is...fingered

speech” (5:09). He uses this to debate the idea that texting and social media are devaluing words.

It allows us to communicate in a way we have never been able to in the past by allowing us to

write exactly how we think, adding more value to our words and a new way of speaking to one

another. In my opinion, texting and social media ​have​ devalued words and I think McWhorter

proves my point. Texting and social media are writing, and has become our main way of
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speaking to one another. This would be an improvement, but the real definition and meaning of

words are not being used, so the whole game becomes a big mystery. A simple “lol” can take on

thousands of meanings unless it is accompanied with a specific image. Text no longer conveys

what we the writer is trying to communicate. People don’t fully comprehend the questions being

asked of them because they are not hearing the intonation and intent behind them. And with

sentences like “I am literally dying” one learns to deny the face value of the words they’ve been

taught. It’s a new way of communicating but not always effective.

Social media and texting allow us to communicate much quicker than in the past, and to

some that is an improvement. It’s a faster world. I believe this speed is pushing us in the wrong

direction. We don’t retain information because so much is being thrown at us. We think less

about the person on the other end of the phone, and put less energy into our responses. Even in

face to face communication there is more time to react because you are seeing a human response,

not just text on a screen. In their book “They Say I Say” Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein

write that “the very volume of new information ... prevents us from thinking clearly” (168). I

agree this statement. It is all just moving too quickly at us. Words fly at us at top speed and it’s

impossible to respond appropriately to any of it, making our communication gain quantity but

lack quality.

One opinion is that texting and social media are bringing us closer together. John

McWhorter writes in his essay ​Is Texting Killing the English Language?​ that “there is no

evidence that texting is ruining compositional skills” (2). He believes that texting and social

media are actually improving our social skills and our experience as human beings. I believe the

opposite, while I don’t think texting is making us dumber, it is numbing us socially. I have sat
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many times in a room of five plus people and not one of them is speaking to one another. This

has become a common trend between young adults. We value our phones and the response we

get from social media more than our real life relationships. I don’t think social media is a crime,

but when you are more focused on how many likes you got on a tweet than the feelings of your

best friend next to you, we as a society have a problem.

Texting and social media are fun and have changed the way the world functions in many

ways. I don’t think either of them have ruined communication forever, I just believe that right

now we are in the dark ages of technology. In the future I believe we will look back and wish we

had used them more efficiently and spent more time focused on the people we are with.
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Works Cited

Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein. ​"They Say / I Say": the Moves That Matter in

Academic Writing.​ W.W. Norton & Company, 2016.

McWhorter, John. “Is Texting Killing the English Language?” ​Time​, Time, 25 Apr. 2013,

ideas.time.com/2013/04/25/is-texting-killing-the-english-language/. Accessed March 05, 2019

McWhorter, John. “Txtng Is Killing Language. JK!!!” ​TED​, TED, 26 Aug. 2014,

www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk.