How TV and the Internet Have Impacted the Decline of the English Language

If American literacy rates have increased over 4.2 % since 1985, why is that the English language has become increasingly abbreviated since that same era? The answer is that today, only minimal reading and writing skills are necessary to simply “get by” in society.

The dawn of television has fostered an increasingly technology-dependent society. What once was a screen in our living room has become a screen on our desks and a screen in our pockets. But the TV, where it all started, was at its peak in the mid-1980’s, the same time when Neil Postman wrote his compelling novel “Amusing Ourselves to Death” to commentate on the effect of television entertainment on public discourse. In his novel, Postman argues that news broadcasting has contributed greatly to the “decontextualization” of information, that is to say information has become more trivial and less relevant to the average viewer. In a sense, it totally eliminated the “why” behind information, solely focusing on the “what”, for the purpose of entertaining and engaging viewers. Television’s influence was the first and most crucial step in the condensation of the English language. In an age where Kim Kardashian’s life and Honey Boo-Boo dominate the TV channels, the elimination of “why” we are being conveyed certain information is certainly evident. As Postman would agree, these TV shows have virtually no effect on the important decisions we make daily (in fact, we are all probably better off without Kim Kardashian and Honey Boo-Boo), therefore what good does this information do for us?

TV today, however, is not the only contributor to the sea of decontextualized information we are exposed to regularly. The computer and the smart phone offer an interactive option that empowers us to respond to the “information” we are receiving: Facebook is an example of a social medium that, in and of itself, creates the need to communicate with our friends, often with no desired goal; it encourages the exchange of irrelevant information. To exemplify this, examine the following sample discussion:

Person 1: Hey brah, how’s it goin?

Person 2: Pretty good brah

Person 1: sweet, gtg lol

Person 2: k cu brah

As you can see, the two individuals in this exchange (likely) did not learn anything valuable or life changing from this discussion, but because they had the means to do so, one felt compelled to chat with the other. Furthermore, the informal topic that they discussed (that is to say no topic at all) encouraged the use of informal language as seen through the phrases “brah”, “gtg” and “cu”, to name a few. Much of this Internet slang has begun to take an oral form, thus indicating the collapse of the English language entirely. The influence of the Internet is therefore the second most vital reason behind the reduction of the English language.
       So, TV eliminated the "why" behind information, and modern Internet devices have begun to eliminate all genuineness of the English language structurally. Bearing this in mind, the reasons why we communicate what we do and the improper manner in which we communicate thus signals a continuing de-evolution of the English language. Today, one must not know why they should communicate effectively, or even how to effectively communicate for that matter. Instead, one must only know how to read and respond to the "hey's" and "hi's" in their Facebook inbox.