One of the most prevalent forms of human interaction in modern times is through social media. No matter our age, apps like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have permeated our daily lives in more ways than we can count, especially in terms of communication and language today.
Social media not only impacts vocabulary but has influenced our understanding of grammar, specifically sentence structure because of the extensive use of abbreviations and grammatically incorrect slang online. Many people fear that spelling and grammar will continue to get worse. Social media breaks standard rules of grammar and spelling, in turn creating words and rules that may have never existed before.
The deep integration of social media apps in our lives has created words like “rizz”. This word was created by TikTok trends and creators but has become so deeply ingrained into our society today that it was published in the Oxford Dictionary.
New words and phrases are constantly being created by trends and creators across social media platforms, but only some manage to make it out into the real world and are used by people in their day-to-day lives. Recently, “mogging” and “looksmaxxing” have emerged across the globe. While both of these are not real words, people on these social platforms created these words to start a trend only understood by active users of social media. “Mogging” means one-upping someone in terms of physical attractiveness and “looksmaxxing” is putting more effort into physical appearance, or practicing self-care.
This is just one example of the millions of trends and words that are constantly used on social media apps. Social media influencers and content creators give new meanings to words constantly. Most popularly, “cooked” has been used in numerous ways to describe things unrelated to food. It can mean someone is doomed for something about to happen in sentences like “I’m cooked for this test.” Someone may be “cooking up” something exceptional, in which case you’d say, “You cooked on that essay.”
A lot of slang adopted on social media platforms has come from African American Vernacular English (AAVE), but because these words are used by everyone, the origin is lost in the exchange of the words. Some of the most popular slang words on social media have come from AAVE: “bet” (which means either “yes” or “it’s on”) “lowkey” (something done secretly or modestly), “highkey” (something done obviously), “ate” (doing something exceptionally), “cap” (to lie), “finna” (going to), and many more.
Overall, social media consistently impacts our understanding of the world and the way we use language and is a way for people across the globe to connect through a universal understanding of such words and phrases.