"AND here you are living, despite it all"...It might read like a punchline to your average 21st century working week but this is poetry, Instagram style.

As the literary world gears up to celebrate World Poetry Day on Tuesday, leading commentators are claiming that the digital world has revolutionised the form, with poets creating short, reactive poems, easy to like and share through popular social media platforms.

It is typified by millennial poets such as Rupi Kaur, a 25-year-old Indian-Canadian poet who writes short and easily digestible sonnets about life and love, and who has attracted 2.4 million followers on Instagram.

Kaur has also crossed over into print with her debut collection, Milk and Honey, selling more than 2.5m copies. Her second collection, The Sun and Her Flowers, launched last October.

Other popular figures include Atticus, whose upbeat, motivational style has attracted 633,000 followers and Nikita Gill, who has amassed 346,000 followers on Instagram, her short verses often taking in themes of relationships and female empowerment.

But many critics have been scathing about the form, branding it empty, vacuous and immature and questioning whether many of the "poems" can be said to be anything much more than motivational quotes.

Some appear on mugs and t-shirts. One from Atticus reads: What good are wings/without the courage to fly. While another from Tyler Kent Whites says baldly: She woke up/every morning/with the option of/being anyone she wanted/how beautiful it was/that she always chose/herself.

In January this year, the much lauded poetry journal PN Review slammed the "amateur" and "consumer driven" content circulating to millions on Instagram.

However others claim that it is helping drive a poetry rival and have argued the short, shareable form is the ideal way of responding to world events quickly and creatively. One from Nikita Gill takes on every day sexism when she writes: How dare you tell me/ 'I am not like most girls'/when the 'girls' you refer to/are my sisters and mothers, my friends – while Rupi Kaur touches on domestic violence writing: If I knew what/safety looked like/I would have spent/less time falling into/arms that were not.

Asif Khan, director of the Scottish Poetry Library, is on the side of those who believe social media is helping to take poetry to the masses – the library is currently looking at how it make better use of digital platforms.

He said: "We welcome any additional material that gets people reading poetry and if people first come across it on social media and get interested all the better. For the millennial generation that is how many people access and share culture.

"Historically poets were balladeers and were part of popular culture. Even if you put aside whether or not it is good, it is participatory and engaging. It may not be as high brow [as some other poetry] but it is important in that it allows poets to respond instantly to events like [the fire at] Grenfell Tower, like [the terrorist attack] at Manchester. It's very democratic – you can say something and it might go viral or it might not. I'm very positive about it."

Performance poet and researcher Katie Ailes agrees that technology from Instagram to Youtube was helping to engage a new demographic. She claimed that poetry had historically always been innovative, citing forms like concrete poetry, which uses the typography and layout as part of the message.

"Because of the form it has to be accessible and easy to understand," she said, "when people are scrolling, so it's not particularly complex or deep.

"I understand the literary establishment backlash, particularly as it has books to sell and this is a free medium, but hopefully when folks see Rupi Kaur on Instagram they will go to Waterstones to buy her book and they will come across other great poets that they can engage with."

Scottish poet and academic Alan Riach claimed he liked a lot of Instagram poets he'd read: "They're ideal for messages, judgments, wit, pronouncements, and they've been around as a literary form for a lot longer than machine technology," he added.