Distractions In Social Media

Distractions From Social Media and its Effects
Mallory Billings
DeVry University
Professor Edwards
August 16, 2015

Distractions From Social Media and its Effects Social media and the internet in general have created a huge impact on the way we live our lives. The human race has had a dramatic affect with how much we really are distracted because of excessive use of electronics and social media. Many look at the younger generations as the ones who will be extremely affected by this, but the older generations are being affected as well. Many of us enjoy the use and ease of the internet but this is leading to other troubles such as loss of relationships, poor health, and distractions from life. The way the internet
Today no one does either of those and it is really sad to think about. The internet has always been such a convenience for the world when it came to doing research, finding pictures, maps, whatever it may be. But once social media came around nothing has really ever been the same. Lately there isn’t a time where you go out to a public place and see people just having a normal conversation without a phone or computer in their hands. People can’t even put a phone away during special occasions like a wedding for instance. Social media is consuming us as a whole and causing many problems. No one is really focused on the people they are with anymore because they are too distracted with other people’s lives and what others are doing through the eyes of social media. According to Steven Strogatz from Cornell University, (2012), “Social media makes it more difficult to distinguish between a true relationships rather the ones that form over social media”(p. 2). More time is spent on less meaningful relationships that some are ruining what they already have. A report done in 2012 showed that 15% of adults on a social networking site had a relationship end and 12% had cases where they got into face to face confrontations due to something said over a website. There shouldn’t be a reason why a relationship is ruined because of one website, but unfortunately that is a big
So many people have let this consume their lives and aren’t living in the real world. They are more or less living in a virtual world through others. Relationships are falling apart, kids are dropping grades, employers are losing money, and some people are dying. Social media is a distraction and needs to be controlled. No one should put their lives aside just to see how many “likes” they can get. There has to be some way to reduce the use of social media to prevent distractions like these from happening.

While writing this report I used a few different rhetorical devices. I used some dysphemism to play down the positives of social media and the way that it is used today. A loaded question was also used in my paper so that I could imply a statement without actually saying my opinion on it. A few times I used proof surrogates when I stated some evidence based on research that I had done without citing it directly. Repetition was another technique that I feel is very useful when writing a paper like this. It really gets the point of what the thesis and argument is about.