The Influence of Social Media on Generation Z’s Writing Skills at the University of Mianwali: A Sociolinguistic Perspective

Abstract

This study examines the sociolinguistic impact of social media on the formal English writing skills of Generation Z English Language Learners (ELLs) in a rural Pakistani context. Framed through Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory, the study investigates how digital platforms operate as cultural tools that fundamentally mediate and reshape cognitive writing schemas. Utilizing a descriptive research design, the study integrates quantitative data from 111 self-reported student surveys with an empirical corpus analysis of 33 handwritten academic essays from the University of Mianwali. While participants report that social media significantly aids vocabulary acquisition and fosters writing confidence through peer scaffolding, it simultaneously drives "orthographic atrophy" and grammatical degradation. The corpus analysis provides stark empirical evidence of this phenomenon, demonstrating how digital User Interface (UI) formatting, text-message shorthand, and syntactic fragmentation physically infiltrate unassisted, handwritten academic prose. Furthermore, despite students reporting high metalinguistic awareness, the ubiquitous practice of code-switching (English and Urdu) frequently results in register instability and casual tone shifts during formal assessments. The paper concludes that informal digital communication habits have deeply colonized students' formal writing behaviors, indicating that modern English pedagogy must evolve to explicitly address and bridge the gap between digital literacies and standard academic discourse.