The Impact of Digital Technology on Student's Writing

The Negative Impacts of Technology on Student's Writing

Plagiarism: Due to the easy access to a lot of written work and resources on the internet. It has made most students lazy and has brought about a decline in writing skills. Some students fail to write original and unique papers, they fail to use their words. Students feel all they need to do is to just copy-paste an already published work rather than using their own words. 

Impatience with the writing process: There are college essay writing services that can instantly give you a finished written work. People no longer see the need to do research, but their effort and try to use their own words in putting up a piece. There is an app and a website for everything (writing, proofreading, editing).

Overreliance on technology: Students become helpless without technology. They have developed more trust in digital tools than they trust in themselves. The use of writing aids and online writing services has made students not believe in themselves anymore. The laziness caused by technology is rampaging. Students have forgotten how to carry out basic tasks like proofreading their texts and checking their spelling and grammar. It now appears that without these tools and online writing services, students cannot present any good form of writing.

Students may lose creativity due to automation. Some platforms limit students to specific writing styles and may create failure in evaluating personal writing proficiency. Concentration may also decrease and shrink students’ attention span. Additionally, students focus on short forms as they struggle to write more concise and well-planned papers.

Cyber slang: Most digital tools and platforms limit students to text expression, and they may incorporate informal writing into formal settings. While social media chats have influenced formal writing, students now cannot differentiate between formal writing and the usual way of chatting with their friends online. They bring this informal writing into their papers that are supposed to be formal and it poses a problem because they are penalized and it affects their grades negatively.

Recommended Digital Writing Tools

The list below is recommended digital writing tools. All of them have their own pros and cons. If students want to get all the features provided, they have to pay and or subscribe. Some of the tools are all-in-one tools.

• Grammar checkers: Grammarly, Hemingway Editor, ProWritingAid
• Citation generators: Opendemia, Citation Machine, Cite This For Me
• Plagiarism checker: Check-Plagiarism, Duplichecker, Smallseotools
• Vocabulary boosters: Vocabulary.com, Magoosh Vocabulary Builder, A Word A Day Widget
• Translation tools: Oxford Dictionary online, Dictionary.com, Google Translate
• Collaboration tool: Google Docs, Ms. Office
• Copywriting: Copywritely, Word Counter, Words to Use

Happy writing!