Over 75% of the population uses some form of social media There are certain positive aspects to a  wide variety of social media sites available to us. The negative impact social media is having an effect on our communication skills has reached the point it can no longer be ignored.

The development of healthy social skills plays an important role in becoming well rounded individuals. Unfortunately it seems the significance of this skill is losing to social media. Reducing the need and desire to develop certain social skills not only will cause issues in the present it will most likely lead to long term issues that have the potential to hold you back entirely. Skills such as correct grammar and punctuation are lost through social media, such as the use of the period. The period is a punctuation mark used at the end of a sentence.Although through texting the period is taken to mean you are angry. “Not only is social media harming our ability to communicate but it is changing the english language” as an article in the  The New Republic states.

Healthy social skills can largely impact your mental as well as your emotional state. Having the knowledge to practice positive social skills can reduce stress and anxiety, allow you to be more in tune with your feelings. UCLA professor Patricia Greenfield stated "Many people are looking at the benefits of digital media in education and not many are looking at the costs. Losing the ability to understand the emotions of other people is just one of the costs." We should consider putting the  devices down and turning off social media a little more and increase our amount of face to face time so that we can get back to developing these skills that are required for a healthy

Social Media is important in our social lives. We can send someone a message to say “hey” and have a full conversation. this is what would be considered communication. “Most conversations are brief because we can look at their social media page and find out about their life. We already see what they are doing and what they have been up to, and how they are feeling so we do not ask” says Kiteley-Schultz. Social media limits our face to face  conversations that we have with people, which is why it is always better to talk to a person face to face rather than through a computer.

Social media has given us so many options for communication that we forget FaceTime is not actual FaceTime. This harms our ability to communicate and changes the original meaning to the  English  language. We should focus more on Face to face communication rather than “tweeting” or “messaging” someone so we have communication skills that will help us in the future.