Snapchat signals the advent of a new language

Snapchat is one of those things that really didn’t have to come into existence, but once it did, it immediately gained a following of users who can’t even fathom how they would’ve gone about their day without it. It’s that way with a lot of things in today’s social media world. Take Facebook, for instance. Isn’t it strange to think that a college student’s homework assignment can shape the way our generation communicates? But it just keeps happening.

Maybe it’s because social media agencies understand just how we like our communication: concise and clear. We want a visual with some text on the side, and a smorgasbord of emojis to express our nuanced emotional states. It’s true that Snapchat propagates the trend of visual communication, but the trend existed before the apps. Just take one look at our advertisements — many of them don’t even have words on them anymore, as opposed to the 1950s Marlboro ads where there would be paragraphs of introduction. So what does that mean — are we regressing as a society because we prefer images over words?

They say, a picture is worth a thousand words. But can a picture really replace words? Or a better question is, should it? I’ve heard many complaints (mostly from English teachers) about how the written word is losing its status in today’s society.

It’s true that we are condensing language with flurries of contractions, abbreviations, and acronyms, but at the same time, we use language now more than ever. Instead of exchanging a letter a week, we exchange hundreds of texts a day. We skillfully learn to match images with the perfect caption. It seems to me that we’ve transformed the concept of communication into one that includes both visual language and written language. Instead of seeing it as the death of the written word, maybe it’s time to see it as the birth of a new partnership.