There is almost no one alive in this era who doesn’t have access to any form of social media whether it be YouTube, snap chat, and twitter. If the information is being accessed from a specific platform open to public where people can upload their ideas and content, then it is social media. In Ann N. Amicucci’s paper, “Four Things Social Media Can Teach You about College Writing—and One Thing It Can’t,” the use of social media can be a tool capable of improving the writing of any college student. However, for all the information available and the myriad of things social media can teach you, the one thing it can teach is how to take rhetoric moves in social media and how to apply that in their writing.
More specifically how to apply intertextuality and interdiscursivity, each involving the process of borrowing information other sources and applying that into your work. To be sure social media is rife with information, pictures, quotes, and other call outs but it can also be a cause for poor writing when used in multitasking.
In the rather impressive research titled, “The Effects of Chronic Multitasking on Analytical Writing,” that focuses on the effects of multitasking on the critical skills required to write analytically I agree with the overall conclusion. Chronic multitasking has a severe negative impact on core skills, effecting memory, information filtering, and switching to other tasks. That the ability of a chronic multitasker in completing any writing with high quality is determined most from relevant and irrelevant distractors, the key source of both being social media. Social media is often used by multitaskers who want to work and engage in the digital environment either for educational or entertainment purposes.
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