THE INFLUENCE OF THE LANGUAGE OF THE INTERNET AND SOCIAL NETWORKS ON STUDENTS' SPEECH

Abstract

This article provides a systematic analysis of the psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic effects of internet and social media language on students' speech. In the modern information society, the primary communication environment for adolescents and school-age youth has shifted from real-life interaction to virtual spaces, resulting in significant changes in both their written and oral speech. The study examines key features of internet language – graphic deformation (leetspeak), abbreviations, emoticons and stickers, transliteration, syntactic simplification, orthographic freedom, as well as phenomena such as "surface literacy" and "clip thinking" characteristic of social media. The article demonstrates how these phenomena lead to errors in dictations and essays, lexical limitations, stylistic decline in students' oral speech, and negative impacts on academic writing in schools and higher education institutions. At the same time, the creative and expressive aspects of internet language – language games, neologism creation, the principle of economy – are objectively assessed. Practical recommendations include fostering "language ecology" awareness among students and developing pedagogical strategies that encourage correct writing even on social media platforms. In conclusion, internet language is an inevitable and undeniable phenomenon, but reducing its negative effects is possible through the development of students' metalinguistic awareness.