We live in a technology-driven society. We live in a society where everything is driven by social media. A society where a person may prefer to text someone or FaceTime instead of actually meeting up with the person, even if they're close by. A society where a person will use Siri to call a person instead of simply dialing the number.
To begin with, getting places has become so much easier. In the past, we couldn't use an app and expect a ride to come within moments of asking for it. Before Lyft and Uber, if people needed a ride and couldn't find a cab, people would walk. In certain areas, you will hardly see people walking around in the streets anymore, due to all of the new transportation options.
Next, people in today's society end up watching Netflix for so long that it turns into bingeing, where Netflix will end up asking if you're still watching. At our fingertips, we have Netflix, Hulu, and many more, which are thousands of hours of entertainment in which it is so easily accessible that we don't need to leave our house to find enjoyment. People don't even end up going to the movie theatres anymore.
Thanks to the GPS and apps like Google Maps, people no longer ask anyone for directions. There is no more pulling off at a random gas stop on a road trip to see where you're at. Instead of using paper maps, voices on our phones tell us where to go.
In addition, our form of communication for the younger generation seems to always be through the phone or the laptop, like texting or social media. Due to all of the new social media available and the new developments of texting, even the English language has been increasingly changing. The language of English is definitely changing as time goes on and it can be seen dating all the way back to the Renaissance era, as the Shakespearean language was much more elegant than today's English language. There is much more slang than there was in the past, and each generation is coming up with new ways to say certain things, which can be seen mostly in teens and young adults.
I believe people from my generation speak differently from people of an older generation because of the society we live in today and due to social media shortening the things we say. If you're having a conversation with a 16-year-old and then another with a 58-year-old, they will most likely use different terminology for certain things. For example, Twitter has a 280-word count limit, which forces people to construct posts that do not exceed that amount, leading to abbreviations and using certain terms for a phrase they want to express. In my opinion, I think that it is a bad thing because as teens grow up, depending on the region where they reside, there could be a lot of Internet slang that they use daily in conversation.
Picking up the phone to call someone seems to be more of an effort nowadays when in reality picking up a phone doesn't require that much energy and is a way to practice a more professional version of the English language. As teens grow up and eventually get into careers, Internet slang can be seen as unprofessional, and it may be hard for some to get rid of certain phrases they would use on a daily. For example, "odee" is an example of slang from the New York City area that means an exaggeration, which I hear many people say in their daily language usage.
I believe that if we want to change and revert back to the English that was used from older generations, we need to stop using certain phrases and slang early on. There is even a website entitled "Slang Across the U.S.A" in which you can listen and learn slang from different states. While it can be seen as pretty creative and inventive, in the professional world, slang isn't used.
Overall, it is ultimately up to us as individuals to become a little less lazy and maybe even revert back to how times used to be. Of course, all of the technological developments we have makes us an advanced society, but sometimes it truly makes us become lazier and rely on "robots" to do things that we should be doing. Don't let it control you.
Feminism Redefined
