With Facebook's user count nearing two billion and with millions of active users on various other social networking mediums, it’s clear that the use of this new technology is here to stay. When people think of social media, they label it as a platform used to connect and interact with both old and new friends, as well as extended family members. Because of this, not many consider that it could actually be harming our ability to communicate. A lot of controversy has recently occurred among scholars concerning whether or not social media has been harming or improving our ability to effectively communicate, and the evidence is abundantly leading to the same conclusion. Social media is harming our ability to communicate by crippling students’ ability to write in correct grammar format, creating a platform that is utilized for self-obsession and deception, and by causing people to be content with substituting face to face interaction with virtual interaction.
          

Many people argue that social media is helping our ability to write because it creates a trend in which people are constantly practicing writing. However, people who argue this fail to realize that people who are constantly writing on social media are often doing so in ways that don’t follow simple grammar rules. As a student, in-class discussions have revealed that an alarming number of students agree that they struggle with the transition between how they write on social media and formal writing. Cambridge Professor David Abulafia reached similar conclusions when he said “People no longer know how to write. It is a society in which fewer and fewer people read. What they do write tends to be short messages in sort of meta-language, with meta-spelling, on Twitter and Facebook”. As an English professor, Abulafia has countless observations of students who are unable to write good formal essays. This is resulting in young adults entering higher forms of education unprepared. A 2012 Cambridge University survey found that a majority of the schools in UK now offer remedial writing courses and Studies conducted in the U.S. show similar results, according to Lance Ulanoffmar in an article titled “Why can’t Johnny Write?”. In order to improve writing ability, students should be limiting their time spent on social media and focus on practicing correct grammar usage and formal writing, which is essential in the modern job market.
          

One of the features social media provides that is harming our ability to communicate is the one that people love: Control. People, generally love to be in control of as many aspects of their lives as possible. As Sherry Turkle points out in her “TED Talks: Connected, but Alone?” people have become accustomed to what she refers to as the “Goldilocks Effect”. This is the desire people have to control exactly how much interaction they have with people. This is causing generations to have diminished social skills and even can create social anxieties. Another thing Turkle addresses is that people are developing a general distaste with simple conversations. She theorizes that this is because people don’t have control over a real conversation in real time. Online, they have developed a habit of editing themselves and their ideas, possible several times over, giving them control over how they present themselves that doesn’t exist in the real world. It’s important that people don’t have total control over their social interaction, because when they do, they develop social skills that are below par and have too much opportunity to edit who they really are. As Kay Green points out in “The Social Media Effect: Are You Really Who You Portray Online?” everything online is about perception and “in terms of perception, we all have an ideal self.” People are willing to change who they portray online to view themselves as their ideal self.
          

The general aspects of social media are positive. They are platforms for people to connect and interact with people who have similar interests and ideas as them. However, these features are being abused by people, and the abuse far outweighs the potential positive aspects. In the article “Before I Met You”, the author Jennifer Brannok explains that “online friends and lovers have greater opportunity to omit details regarding physical characteristics or backgrounds, which can lead to disappointment, embarrassment and even in severe instances, danger.” People are constantly trying to pretend to be something other than themselves. Social media gives them a platform to obsess about their own self-image, often leading to lower self-esteem and discontentment with themselves. Unfortunately, these problems are most prevalent in teenage girls. 45% of girls feel worried about others posting “ugly” pictures of themselves online and 28% of girls admit to editing their pictures before posting them online according to an infographic published by “Common Sense Media”. These stats depict a huge demographic of people that feel they must achieve a physical level of beauty that may not be reachable, and are willing to change who they are to get there. Social media is constantly being used as a platform to deceive and self-obsess over things that aren’t worth doing so over.
          

As people are being launched deeper into the world of technology, it is important that we evaluate the opportunities that may be presented by it, such as social media. The draw of these new communication techniques are evident, but the drawbacks need to be considered as well. We can’t allow ourselves to be absorbed by social media because of its self-editing abilities and the control it gives us. While social media has many appealing aspects, it is revealing itself to be something we should be wary of and make sure it is used in moderation.
          

The author, Sullivan Curd, is a high school student at Paul Laurence Dunbar. As a student he has numerous first counter experiences with the effects of social media and how they are used in today’s society. He also has been researching both sides of the social media controversy, evaluating and analyzing the argument.