#AddWomen

For me, I didn’t know what a hash tag was until my freshman year of high school. I discovered what a hash tag was when I made a twitter account. The way in which a high school student used a hash tag during my freshman year is vastly different from how one is used now. Hash tags nowadays are used as a way to connect a tweet to other related ones. For example, #AddWomen is a hash tag that is attached to the issue of women in Stem related fields. This hash tag is a way for people on twitter to discuss the issue of the lack of women in Stem fields. Personally I think hash tags on twitter are the coolest things. All one has to do is search the hash tag on twitter and depending on the popularity of the hash tag there will be various tweets from people with their opinion on the matter. Hash tags are a way for people to get their opinion out there for everyone to see. Hash tags such as #AddWomen have taught me that writing doesn’t need to be formal and wrote in conventional ways such as poems or novels. Hash tags teach that writing can be as simple as a tweet. Writing can have a powerful meaning behind it and can change the world. A hash tag such as this one elevated awareness for the issue and may have changed the way women are perceived in Stem fields. For example, a woman who wants to become an engineer may have not pursued her dream as a result of the bias, but maybe as a result of her reading all the tweets associated with #AddWomen she may have realized she has a lot of support. Hash tags are a twenty first century way of writing and they definitely change the way in which writing is utilized.