Evan Hrbek

UWRT- 1104

Mrs. Raymond

2/1/19

Social Media Affects Writing Style

When I was in early grade school, I was not surrounded by social media at all. I did not

own a phone, I did not have snapchat, I did not have an Instagram, and I did not e-mail, so I was

able to strictly learn how to write professionally at an early age. As social media grew, I got a

phone in high school and I feel that it affected my writing to an extent. I was on the phone for at

least a couple hours every day either texting my friends or playing games. I adapted to

abbreviating my words to type quicker when I was communicating with my friends, which

probably wasn’t the best habit to gain. This affected my writing a little bit because I would bring

some of those habits to the essays I was writing, making it a lot harder for me to edit my work.

My grammar didn’t even sound the same when I was reading over my papers. I knew this was

going to be a habit I had to overcome because in the future, I am going to have to compose more

professional forms of writing and can’t afford to make the simple grammar and spelling errors I

was making. I ended up getting grades that I was not used to getting for writing papers and

analyzing articles. This made me less confident in my writing as the days went by, even though

my failures were because of fixable mistakes. I eventually grew out of some of these habits as

papers seemed to get stricter and required professional guidelines such as argumentative and

persuasive essays.
 As I matured into more complex writing during my senior year, I realized how important

it was to stay professional in my writing, especially since I was about to be in college the next

year. I realized writing is very important because it is totally different way to communicate with

the people around you or even with people around the world. At this time, I was surrounded by

every form of social media known to man: e-mail, snapchat, Instagram, text, vine, and even

twitter. This took a lot of maturing when it came to my writing. I had to keep a strong mind and

write how I used to. I had to erase the horrible habits I gained from texting and using Instagram

and snapchat. During my senior year, e-mail was not really a problem for me because I was

eventually challenged to type more professionally. Around this time, I had a job at Buku Global

Street Food. This was a very fancy restaurant that required professional clothing and professional

service. Most of the time, I was not able to communicate with my boss in person about shifts, so

I had to email her. I knew that this wasn’t just an email to my mom or one of my friends, my

boss takes her job very serious and I had to speak professional and show her that I was just as

committed to the workforce as she was. As you can see, social media has mostly impacted me in

a negative way, but there were some positives that went along with it as well. I went through a

few failures, but I also grew as a writer and as a person because it made me feel more

professional.