Is Social Media Killing Literature?

Social media is the root cause of all evil. You would be forgiven for thinking so at least. It has been blamed for breaking up relationships, destroying careers, disintegrating family connections, reducing attention spans, driving obesity rates, causing violence, and proliferating unemployment. That’s quite a CV.

Let’s not start on its effect upon literature. Critics state that people are turning away from reading, preferring to can see an image or play within it, rather than imagine one from carefully crafted words. A diet of abbreviated words and short sentences render them incapable of reading and writing, stunted from employing language to its full capability, and unable to use vocabulary and grammar correctly. Few bother reading or writing a book when they can transmit the same message in only a few lines. We ‘like’ and ‘favourite’ our way through the day – does this mean we can no longer like literature?

Read more at The London Magazine

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