RACHEL EMERSON
Blogger
We’ve all heard the arguments about social media affecting our intelligence, but exactly how true is it?
Our generation is very familiar with social media and all of its perks. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Tumblr and all other – less popular but still just as important – not only keep us entertained, they also allow us to communicate in different fashions, and keep us updated with what’s new and trending. But, it also makes us dumb, right? Wrong.
I’m not saying it necessarily makes us smarter, because how could spending three hours scrolling through Twitter or Snapchatting pictures of your food, make you smarter? I’m just saying, it’s quite a statement to say it makes us dumb.
Most people use what seem like a completely different language to someone not familiar to communicate via text or social media. For instance, you wouldn’t finish a sentence on a paper for class with a #hashtag, but on Twitter that’s pretty much the only way you do end a story. You also wouldn’t start a final essay with “hey, r u goin to tht prty 2nite?” but you may send it to a friend on a Friday evening. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t know how to do it the right way.
Just because we use social media and communicate in different ways because of it, doesn’t mean we don’t know how to communicate at all. It also doesn’t mean we aren’t just as smart as the person sitting next to us. It may not make us smarter, but social media doesn’t make us unintelligent either.