Wajih Khawaja

Professor Dedek
English 1100
October 12, 2016

Always Connected
Whether youre at home, across the country or on the opposite side of the planet, any one
of your friends is a simple press of a screen away from being in contact with you. Due to social
media, what once would require a person to send a letter and wait weeks back for a reply can
now be done instantaneously. This is something that has been personally beneficial for me
because I recall when I was younger, in order for my parents to communicate with any of my
family from Pakistan, they would have to go out of their way to go spend tens of dollars on
calling cards in order to call them. But thanks to social media there are hundreds of apps that let
you message anyone in the world like WhatsApp, and others that even let you call for free.
Social media has completely revolutionized the way in which we interact and communicate, and
has moved society in a positive direction by promoting self-love, human interaction and overall a
better world.
There are many pros and cons to social media depending on how you look at the
platform. For example, if you were to ask my mom how she feels about it, being a part of a
generation that did not grow up with social media, the first thing that would come to mind for her
would be me and my brothers always being on our phones texting or on Twitter or social media,
so she would say it is a distraction from what is important like school work. But she would not
think of how it actually allows for her to talk to her cousins across the world with ease, or

Facebook allows for her to see that her brothers family vacationed to Dubai or that somebody
else is having a family gathering. This thought process is how I interpreted Sherry Turkles
argument in the article No Need to Call in which she believes social media presents a
vulnerability to the younger generation and face to face conversations. In a way, this could make
sense if you look at it from a one sided perspective, like my mom would do. The vulnerability
that Turkle is talking about is the idea that we might live in a world where face to face
conversations are no longer a thing because, social media will take away the self confidence that
comes with having a face to face conversation. This is actually a pretty common opinion because
in todays media that is all we see, the slander of social media, not much so how it is actually
helping us. But if you were to actually evaluate social media as a whole it allows for us to do
things like, have a place to voice our beliefs on things that matter to us on platforms like Twitter,
Facebook and even campaign websites like Change.org and even watch Shia Labeouf get
married in Las Vegas by an Elvis impersonator on a livestream. We live in a time where teens are
more active than ever about their political beliefs using Twitter to voice injustices that are
happening across the nation and organize peaceful protests to raise awareness for such issues.
Going out in the streets and voicing your beliefs is something that requires more confidence than
a face to face conversation. If you were to look at the presence that the younger generation has in
politics today, it is easy to understand and see that the younger generation wants their voice to be
heard and they are more confident in themselves and their opinions, and this can be directly to
their use of social media. It is empowering the younger generations and actually making them
more confident and want their voices to be heard rather than unconfident and shy as Turkle
believes.

Someone who was in the same boat as most parents is Kelly Wallace, a CNN reporter,
who at one point in her life would immediately think of negative things when social media was
brought up. In her article for CNN The upside of selfies: Social media isnt all bad for kids
Wallace talks to many parents who understands the importance of social media like Eileen
Masio, a mother of two in New York who believes that just as damaging as social media can be,
it can ... help to build self-confidence, too." (Wallace) Social media might allow people to be
more confident online but that confidence doesnt only reside in their online presence but also
transfers over to the real world. Not only that, according to a report conducted by nonprofit child
advocacy group Common Sense Media despite how much teens love the new technology that
they have and the fact that theyre always texting, teens still prefer face to face communication
above all, in fact forty-nine percent of those asked preferred in person with texting coming in
second at thirty-three percent, and even those who preferred texting, preferred it because, it is the
quickest and easiest way. When asked why they preferred face to face ithe top three answers
were that, it is more fun, they can understand what people really mean, and that they feel more
comfortable talking about personal things. In Turkles article a big part of her statement was that
the younger generation prefers texting to face to face communication because it is more
comfortable but based off this study that is obviously wrong.
As humans we are always looking for ways to make once tedious or time consuming
tasks, easier and efficient. Social media is as big as it is because thats exactly what it is, it has
created a way to still be social with friends, family, or whoever but in an efficient and quick way.
Just because people have preference does not mean we as people are eventually going to be
doomed socially awkward people who will not be able to communicate with each other. It is like
if when the mailing system was created for someone to argue that now we will all be unable to

talk to each other because sending a post card was easier. It is two different things that do not
have any correlation to the other. This related heavily to the argument that Google is making us
dumber because we no longer have to put any thought into finding anything, so we dont have to
remember anything, resulting in our brains becoming lazier. While this is valid in some ways the
way we achieve this information hasnt really changed, it is just from a different source, before
Google, people would use other people as points of reference for things they didnt feel were
important enough to remember. Just like that they way we interact hasnt really changed just the
medium of choice. Instead of a letter, where emotion and feelings also could not be picked up we
now use text or e-mail.
I find myself to agree a lot with Jenna Wortham author of I Had a Nice Time With You
Tonight. On the App., who like the teens interviewed in the study, felt like social media had
heightened my desire for actual one-on-one meetings. (Wortham) In this article she references
a study that said 74% of the adult internet users who report that the internet had an impact on
their marriage or partnership say the impact was positive . . . 41% of 18-29 year olds in serious
relationships have felt closer to their partner because of online or text message conversations.
(Duggan, Lenhart) So not only is social media allowing for young teens who are still
developing social skills, but it has also enhanced the love lives of adults who did not have that
method of communication beforehand.
Overall technology has revolutionized our world to make the lives of a large majority
easier. When specifically talking about social media it has been able to provide young teens with
the confidence boost that would be able to help them engage in more face to face conversations
and feel more comfortable and confident about it. There are negative aspects to social media
when you look at the services as a whole, but the pros largely outweigh the cons. When people

like Turkle and other people with voices go on about how negative social media is without ever
highlighting the positives you get people like Kelly Wallace who once felt that all social media
was negative. In order to really understand the power of social media in everyday life and human
interaction, you must look at the platform as a whole, rather than pick and choose what you feel
is appropriate and what is not.

Works Cited
Graff, Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter
in Academic Writing, with Readings. 3rd Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015.
Print.
Lenhart, Amanda, and Maeve Duggan. Couples, the Internet, and Social Media. Pew Research
Center Internet Science Tech RSS, 11 Feb. 2014
Social Media, Social Life: How Teens View Their Digital Lives | Common Sense
Media. Social Media, Social Life: How Teens View Their Digital Lives | Common Sense Media,
Common Sense Media, 26 June 2012, https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/socialmedia-social-life-how-teens-view-their-digital-lives#.

Turkle, Sherry. No Need to Call. They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic
Writing, with Readings. 3rd Edition. Eds. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015. 373-391. Print.
Wallace, Kelly. The Upside of Selfies: Social Media Isn't All Bad for Kids.CNN, Cable News
Network, 7 Oct. 2014,

Wortham, Jenna. I Had a Nice Time with You Tonight. On the App. Alone Together: Why We
Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other New York, Gerald Graff, Cathy
Birkenstein and Russel Durst New York: W.W. Norton, 2015 . 393-97 Print.