The Influence of Social Media Exposure on Adolescent Vocabulary Development: A Psycholinguistic Review

Abstract

Social media has become an important source of linguistic input for adolescents, influencing how they acquire and use vocabulary in daily communication. While previous studies have emphasized sociolinguistic variation, limited research has examined adolescents’ vocabulary development from a psycholinguistic perspective. This study aims to investigate the influence of social media exposure on adolescents’ vocabulary development through a qualitative approach. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, observation, and analysis of social media texts involving adolescents aged 13–18 years. The findings reveal that adolescents acquire new vocabulary through repeated exposure to social media content, particularly informal and digital-based expressions. Psycholinguistically, this process involves cognitive mechanisms such as attention, memory, and lexical retrieval. The study concludes that social media plays a significant role in shaping adolescents’ vocabulary development and functions as an informal language learning environment.