Mock synthesis essay AP Lang

ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION
SECTION II
Total time--2 hours

Question 1

(Suggested time--40 minutes. This question counts for one-third of the total essay section score.)

Social networking has become the staple of the internet and the most common way for connecting to other people all over the modern world. Social networking for many is terrifying, full of risks and unknowns, whereas for others, social networking has brought people into healthy relationships with other internet users.

Read the following 5 sources carefully, including the introductory information for each source. Then, in a well-organized essay that synthesizes at least three of the sources for support, take a position that defends, challenges, or qualifies whether social media has had a positive or negative effect on social interactions.

Make sure your argument is central; use the sources to illustrate and support your reasoning. Avoid merely summarizing the sources. Indicate clearly which sources you are drawing from, whether through direct quotation, paraphrase, or summary. You may cite the sources as Source A, Source B, etc., or by using the descriptions in parentheses.

Source A (Pacific Uni.)
Source B (Read)
Source C (White)
Source D (Jaffe)
Source E (Atkinson)
Source F (picture)

Source A
“Online Social Networking Dangers and Benefits”, pacific.edu, University of the Pacific, 20 August 2013. Web. 2 Jan. 2014.

The following is excerpted from an online article describing safety measure on the internet.

Social Networking Site Dangers

Because students often post detailed and specific information on Facebook (including phone numbers, addresses, class schedules, social plans, etc.) you can be more easily stalked by strangers (or even acquaintances).

Identity theft can also be a significant risk of social networking. Personal details like your full name, names of your family members, your phone number, birthday, address, and place of employment can all be used by identity thieves. "Passport-style" profile photos also make it easier for identity thieves to replicate your online presence.

Impact on Schooling and Employment

Actions in the digital world can have far-reaching consequences in real life. Inappropriate posts on social media can have severe repercussions on a student's academic career, and students can lose jobs, internships and even interviews because of the information potential employers are finding out about students on their social networking accounts.
Compromising and inappropriate pictures, statements or other information on student social networking accounts can hurt students' chances to gain (or even be considered for) employment. Employers take the images that students are portraying on social networking sites very seriously as a reflection of personal character.

Benefits of Social Networking Sites
A social networking site can be a good way to make connections with people with similar interests and goals. They can be a way to connect with or "meet" people that a student may not have had the opportunity to before-including other students, staff, faculty and even alumni. Just as social media provides another avenue for making friends, it also makes it possible to renew old ones. Thus, meeting people and staying connected with classmates and friends is a major benefit of social networking sites. Social networking sites also offer event listings, group profiles and fan pages that can communicate the pulse of a campus culture. They can be a great way to understand and stay connected to your campus community as a whole.

Source B
Social Networking Site Use, by Age Group. Creating Results file photo. Read, Erin. “US Social Network Users by Age Group-New Statistics From Pew.” www.knowledge.creatingresults.com. 19 Feb. 2013. Web. 2 Jan 2014.

The following is a graph displaying growth of social networking by age group.

Source C
“Why Social Media Isn’t Social.” Huffington Post. Thomas White. www.huffingtonpost.com. 3 Sep. 2013. Web 2 Jan 2014.

The following excerpt is from an opinion column from the Huffington Post about social networking’s effect on people.
The Social Media Mask
Have you ever noticed that the lives' of your ostensibly boring friends always seem way more interesting on social media sites? That's because these sites and apps allow us to choose an impressive filter for our lives, making boring exceptional and mediocre exciting.
And thus, we spend our lives keeping up with the Virtual Benjamin's; creating an online persona that rarely looks anything like us -- a cybernetic facelift, if you will. We create an image of a certain type of person: someone who is smart, funny, witty, has good taste, fun friends, an interesting life, someone who doesn't just live life, but lives a grand life. We experience the world, and we do it while looking fabulous.
What can we do?
We can start by forcing ourselves not to fall prey to the ease with which we can communicate over social media instead of in person. We can be conscious of the fact that virtual-life isn't the same as real-life. In fact, it is a sad substitute.
This is what I fear: that when stripped of our social media crutch, like the ducklings losing their bread, we will forget -- or never learn if we start young enough -- how to communicate, to interact, to make friends, to fall in love, and carry on a conversation, unless we force ourselves to beat back this notion that social media can be a replacement for real-life, person-to-person interaction.
It isn't. And the longer we use it like that, complete with our misleading masks and sturdy shields, the more we'll lose one of our greatest gifts: the ability to argue, to disagree, to make mistakes, to be honest, to say what we think, and to take other people's feelings into consideration. In other words, to talk.

Source D
“The ‘Contagion’ of Social Networks.” Los Angeles Times. Eric Jaffe. wwwarticles.latimes.com. 13 Sep. 2010. Web. 3 Jan. 2014.

The following is an excerpt from an article pushing for the idea of utilizing social networking to improve public health.
Many public health leaders now believe this growing science of social networks can be used to improve health and well-being on a broad, population-sized scale. Some see the approach as a promising new front against the day's most urgent health problems, such as obesity, smoking and suicide.
"We've come to realize more and more that how people live and function in social networks is really important to health," says Deborah Olster, acting director of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research at the National Institutes of Health. What's less clear, at least so far, is the best way to nudge people toward healthy habits and away from destructive ones. Results from experiments are mixed — some efforts work, others don't. In March, the NIH issued a funding opportunity for scientists studying how to improve public health through social networks.
Public health programs could tap into social networks in two main ways, says Dr. Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School, co-author with James Fowler of UC San Diego of the 2009 book "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives."
One approach, says Christakis, is to manipulate the network of connections people have. Artificial social groups — think Weight Watchers — could be created to urge unhealthy members toward more healthful behaviors. A second approach, which Christakis considers far more promising, is to manipulate existing networks so that positive health messages become "contagious." In this model, public health programs would target key members of a social group in an effort to influence the network at large.
When social scientists talk of "networks," they mean any social circle in which people trade ideas, share experiences and generally touch each other's lives — neighborhoods, offices, classrooms or online communities such as Facebook. Identifying the most influential or popular people within these networks has become easy, Christakis says, due to advances in data analysis. The trick is to identify which members could give positive health efforts the best bang for the buck and to create the best design for such programs.
Source E
“Social Media Should Be Used Responsibly.” Huffington Post. Katie Atkinson. www.huffingtonpost.com. 4 Nov. 2013. Web. 3 Jan 2014.

The following is an excerpt from a high schooler writing out her opinion on cyber-bullying and where it can lead.
Rebecca Ann Sedwick. That is the name of a 12-year-old girl who jumped to her death in September after being repeatedly bullied by a group of girls. That bullying, as you may have guessed, took place mostly online. A cluster of individuals, mostly girls her age and older, harassed Rebecca through hateful messages on social media outlets. Reportedly, one of the final messages Rebecca received said, "You aren't dead yet" and prodded her to "Go jump off of a building." That is precisely what she ended up doing. After Rebecca took her own life, one of her bullies posted a Facebook status admitting that she had in fact bullied Rebecca and that she did not care about the young girl's suicide.
Cyberbullying is an issue that unfortunately society has seemed to turn its cheek on. On Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media outlet, it requires little effort to harass someone. While many of these sites were created for harmless networking and fun, they have instead turned into some of the greatest tools to harm others with. Oftentimes, those responsible for misusing social media are not even aware of what they are doing wrong. The popular "subtweet" on Twitter allows for users to make references to people without directly tagging them. Subtweeting allows a user to be hurtful and seemingly blameless all at the same time -- a deadly combination if you ask me. Similar programs such as Tumblr and Ask.fm allow users to send anonymous messages to anyone else with an account. I have seen these messages include snide remarks and hateful comments aimed towards innocent people. The animosity of these comments makes it very easy for users to be ridiculed, harassed and shamed. Still, the attacks occur on a regular basis to multitudes of teens, and no confrontation ever takes place between victim and bully.
I believe that teenagers should start using social media responsibly. Hateful remarks should never find their way into places that were created to be useful sources of information and fun pastimes. Users should remove anonymous settings from sites that offer them to decrease the amount of hate that comes from them. Teens should stop hiding behind smartphones and plotting to take down their next innocent victims.

Source F
“Likeoholic.” Asaf Hanuka. www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk. 9 May 2014. Web. 3 Jan. 2014.

The following is a commentary illustration social networking.