Writing Revolution or Not?

            At this day and age, young people’s lives are crowded with social networking of all sorts and many look down upon that. Of course there are the Facebook fights and Controversial pictures and topics seen on Tumblr, but who should say that any of this is actually a waste of time? Clive Thompson makes a claim that a new literacy is emerging and I could not agree more.

            In my mind, literacy can be defined as effectively communicating one’s thoughts in writing while also being able to read others’ written thoughts and understand them. Writing does not have to be a whole book’s worth of thoughts or contain extensive vocabulary- writing is simply using written words to get a point across. Writing does not have to be about a great, famous person that lived long ago or an analysis on the production of certain proteins- writing can simply be about feelings and what interests you.

            If you asked many teens and young adults what they do in their free time, most would say that they get on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Tumblr (for a few examples.) On these sites you can see anything from little snips of conversation and thoughts in the form of tweets or page long life details in the form of blogs. This is how we learn to communicate with the world. We may not have advanced sentence structure or obsess over our syntax and word count, but we are using our writing to put our thoughts and feelings out into the world for others to see and reflect upon.

 A perfect example of why I appreciate this new age of communication involves Facebook. One morning I woke up and performed my usual ritual of checking my Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook. As I scrolled down the Facebook page, I noticed that one of my friends’ statuses was very shocking and intriguing. She made a remark to the effect that all women are good for are cooking cleaning, and raising children. There were a large number of comments- so I knew I had to investigate for myself. At first, many comments were joking back with her, a few males agreeing here and there. But then I saw that another good friend of mine has commented and was not pleased in the least. She left a lengthy, upset yet respectful comment in reply. Another woman then entered the conversation, resulting in the two going back and forth, and one attempting to argue while the other just wanted her opinion to be heard and make no fuss. In the end, the two of them realized that while they may not agree with what the other is saying, they can accept their opinions and appreciate the fact that in any other circumstance, they would have never made conversation.

So you see, as much as one may find spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, these forms of networking allow for effective communication among many levels. The fact that students may not make good use of spell check and revisit grammar rules can be corrected but not being able to tell others how you feel and analyze others’ opinions can never be fixed if a person is not given the chance to use those abilities first hand- the way they chose to. Of course I can see that we need to work on handling lengthier texts and critical reading, but that can come in time. Skills such as those may not always be used in life outside of an educational setting, but communication is something we will always be faced with. If we cannot carry away the correct meaning of ethos, we should at least be able to simply write- take our feelings, opinions, daily experiences and turn them into something that others can enjoy and might even do the same in their own way.