The Influence of Social Media Language on English Grammar among Teenagers

Abstract

     This paper presents the research on the changes in the relation between social media language and the grammatical competence of adolescents in formal settings in English. With the huge impact of such platforms as TikTok, Instagram, and WhatsApp on the communication patterns of everyday life, the preferences of young consumers of such applications are the abbreviated language, informal grammatical language structure, and visual content like emojis. Such habits lead to the fear of loss of their command on the formal grammar, especially in the learning institutions where the written English used is the professional one.

The study takes a theoretical and descriptive reading where primary areas of grammar under threat of getting influenced digitally will be covered, which are, structure of the sentence, punctuations, consistency in tenses of a verb, orthography, and subject-verb agreement. It is based on the language acquisition theories which incorporate the Input Hypothesis by Krashen and the concept of Noticing Hypothesis by Schmidt explaining the effect of informal input based on social media to affect the internalization of the formal grammar rules in the adolescent stage.

Although according to certain empirical research no negative effects of texting and digital writing on grammar are evident, not to mention potential positive effects on metalinguistic awareness, still educators claim to be facing digital language features in some areas of academic work. These are lost punctuations, uniform capitalization, use of slangs or abbreviations in the essays and assignments.

The research makes the following conclusion: the social media cannot be considered the negative phenomenon as such however, its increasing prominence in the life demands a moderate pedagogical reaction. Among the recommendations are the explicit teaching on the aspect of register-switching, the incorporation of the issue of digital literacy into the curriculum, as well as reinforcement of fundamentals associated with grammar. Nevertheless, by closing the digital fluency - academic proficiency gap, educators can ensure that the students build the ability to function in different linguistic contexts without compromising the capability for formal written expression.