Social Media and the Changing Nature of Academic Writing: Informal Digital Language Practices among Youth
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S. Sabeena Begum
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Bishop Heber College, Trichy-17, Tamil Nadu, India
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- Abstract
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Social media has become a significant medium of communication among young people and has contributed to changes in contemporary language practices. This paper examines the possible influence of informal digital language practices on formal academic writing among youth. Adopting a qualitative and descriptive approach, the study uses constructed illustrative examples representing commonly observed linguistic features of digital communication, including abbreviations, informal vocabulary, grammatical simplification, sentence fragments, punctuation omission, and code-switching. The analysis considers how these informal practices may affect students' ability to distinguish between conversational digital language and the conventions of formal academic English, particularly in examination answers and formal letter writing. The study also draws on perspectives from digital communication, language acquisition, cognitive load, and code-switching. The findings suggest that social media has a dual influence: it promotes creativity, accessibility, and rapid communication while potentially challenging students' register awareness and formal writing practices. The study therefore advocates a balanced pedagogical approach that develops students' digital communication skills alongside their proficiency in formal academic English.
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- 2026-09-06
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Copyright (c) 2026 The Author(s)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
