Nabilla qorima; Ika Amelia; Muhammad fayiz Affam Muhammad Hisyam; Muhamad Basir; Yeremias Bardi
This study aims to describe the shift in language variety within the student social media ecosystem and analyze its relevance to strengthening the use of formal Indonesian in higher education. The development of digital communication technology has created new interaction patterns that influence students' lexical choices, syntactic structures, and discourse construction. This study employed a qualitative descriptive method with a sociolinguistic approach. Data were obtained through documentation of students' social media posts over three months, in-depth interviews, and analysis of academic essay texts. The analysis was conducted through data reduction, categorization, interpretation, and verification using source and method triangulation techniques to ensure data validity. The results indicate four dominant forms of language shift: code-mixing, the use of digital abbreviations, non-standard vocabulary, and simplification of sentence structure. These shifts are partially carried over into academic writing and affect grammatical accuracy, sentence effectiveness, and text coherence. However, digital language practices also demonstrate students' linguistic creativity and social identity construction. This study emphasizes the importance of integrating digital literacy and language awareness-based learning into the higher education curriculum to maintain formal Indonesian standards without ignoring sociolinguistic dynamics in the digital space.