Clive Thompson on the New Literacy

            In the article “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy” Clive Thompson uses the claim that technology is responsible for student’s inability to write in his first paragraph. However, Thompson goes on to disprove this claim by using Andrea Lunsford’s ideas. Lunsford believes that social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace are improving student’s academic writing. Lunsford states that people are writing much more in this generation than any other generation. She believes that this is because the majority of socializing takes place online, and more of the time socializing is done by using text. Years ago Americans rarely wrote anything that wasn’t a school assignment but, today people are writing all the time because of all of the social networks that people have access to. Lunsford goes on to say that most people write for an audience rather than for just one person. For students writing is about giving their opinion, persuading or debating even if it is about something as simple as what movie they should go see. Writing for the purpose of getting a grade is less understandably less appealing to students because only their professor reads it whereas if you posted something on Facebook many people would read it.  In conclusion Lunsford believes that the internet is a great place for students to develop good writing skills.

            My opinion is that the internet is indeed increasing our ability to write well. Social networks provide people with a reason to write and they actually encourage people to write because that’s what the whole website is about. Without writing there would be no such thing a social network. I can relate to the idea that the internet improves people’s ability to write because if it weren’t for the internet and texting I would virtually never write anything outside of school. If I didn’t text or go on the internet as often as I do I may not have the skills in writing that I currently possess. Although these websites have proven to increase how much we write they are not always beneficial. Some people only write on these websites and when they are instructed to write an essay they struggle because they don’t write about anything but themselves or what is going on in their social circle.  However, I still maintain that social networks have greatly increased the frequency in which we write, and I believe that for the most part they are beneficial when it comes to the quality of people’s writing today. Repetition is learning and the more we write the better we become at it, and since we write so often we will eventually become more comfortable with writing and it will become second nature, not something to dread doing. The more we write the more we will enjoy it, especially if we are writing about ourselves first, and when we have to write something for academic purposes it won’t as big of a problem if it would be if we didn’t write anything on a regular basis. Overall, I agree with Andrea Lunsford because if it weren’t for the internet and cell phones, we wouldn’t be writing as much as we currently are today.