How Social Media Affects 'Friendship' and The Use of Slang

Social media interactions have influenced the evolution of language and such communications have had major cultural consequences including the connotation behind ‘friendship’ and the use of slang. Social media already highly influenced the way we speak and write, but how large of a role does it have on our thoughts? 

Maybe more than any of us realize, altering the underlying foundations of our very being: our attitudes, values and beliefs. Media platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat are having an effect on slang and language generally. In both platforms there is an impact on the English language due to the improper use of grammar, punctuation and sentence structure. It could be argued that this trend amounts to a lazy form of communication, but in a fast-paced society, it facilitates fast and convenient interaction. The internet is a trigger for a huge amount of words to be created but also the reason for their ability to be picked up and used by others regularly. A decade ago, it would have taken years for a slang phrase to become well known as it travelled due to word of mouth whereas today it can take a matter of weeks for an expression to ‘go viral’. Even entering dictionaries as legitimate words. New vocabularies are being introduced on the internet very rapidly, used excessively, such as the new words added to the Collins Official Scrabble dictionary such as ‘grrl’ or ‘thang’. 

Technology is giving slang and new words a respectability as well as a visibility. An additional aspect of the English language that is being altered is the concept of friendship. Social media websites and applications such as Facebook and Snapchat change what it means to be a friend and what it means to communicate with other people. Much like Facebook, Snapchat refers to users as ‘friends’ and encourages users to add and interact with these friends through the app. Traditionally, people view friendships as one-on-one interactions that take time to build and mature. Social media platforms challenge this notion by allowing people to call hundreds or even thousands of people ‘friends’. Although Snapchat also offers the term ‘best friend’ for those you snap frequently, this label is also complicated. As users, we must consider how these labels change the way that we interact with other people on Snapchat. These blanket terms might cause users to send snaps to more people because they start thinking of them as ‘friends’ or ‘best friends’. 

In this way, the technology itself guides our use of the application and the way that we communicate with other and how we communicate. Social media interactions have influenced the evolution of language and such communications have had major cultural consequences including the meaning behind ‘friendship’ and the use of slang.