| March 6th, 2018

Conversation and Social Media

By: journeymagazine

By| Lauren Coleman

Language and conversation change as generations grows, we speak in broken words and sometimes what we say is unidentifiable. You walk past a group of middle school kids cursing trying figure out how did they learn this.

You continue about your day and speak to your friends in the same manner but is it really different because you’re older? We live in a world where technology advances are happening every day and even as I write this.

We, as young adults, switch our language and even our body language when we speak to different people in various age brackets. The way we break down language is different and sometimes difficult for older generations to understand.

For example, some parents thought “lol” meant “lots of love” when to their children it means “laugh out loud.”  There is no true way to identifying when or who came up with the different acronyms to make texting a lot faster.

We have chopped down the amount of words to use in a message to convey our message to our peers. Instead typing out the full sentence, we will abbreviate the words to get to the point faster.

We also have social media to play a big role in how we greet and speak to one another. Jelani Pitts, 3rd year Health Science with a concentration in Pre-Occupational Therapy believes that social media is plays a role in how we connect with people.

“If I wanted to look someone on social media, I can and find out so much about them and be okay with it,” said Pitts. Social media has also puts us at arm’s length with one another.

Social media also has its plus side with gathering information. Mikela Pryor, 3rd year Biological Systems Engineering with a concentration in Natural Resources Conservation Engineering believes that social media helps put out good, useful information.

“You can get a lot of information out there that people would have not known without social media,” said Pryor.

Realizing that social media affects every aspect of someone’s life whether it is through communication or socializing. Communication does not have to be face-to-face anymore but through a phone or computer screen.

We, as a young adult, find that it is important to speak to different people in different manners. Marrissa McFarlane also believes knowing that difference of how to talk to someone of a different age is important.  

“I have respect for adults and I speak to them differently than I would with my friends,” said McFarlane.