Ostrowski, H. (2011, April 21). Facebook: Ruining my education. dailytitan. Retrieved January 21, 2011, from www.dailytitan.com/2011/04/21/facebook-ruining-my-education/
In this article, H. Ostrowski uses claim of cause to convince us that Facebook is ruining our education by taking herself as an example. According to her, Facebook, the most popular social network today, does not only distract us from important things (spending too much time on Facebook, typing away on Facebook chat in classrooms), but also disturb our roomates who "incidently" get their eyes caught on the laptop addicts' screens. To strengthen her argument, the author also points out the result of a 2008 article from The New York Time about negative effects of social network sites on "slowing study habits". It's obvious that she tries to use ethos and pathos appeal to buy the readers' agreement.
However, her argument is not persuasive to me for some reasons. Firstly, she doesnt give the readers any number of students who are distracted by Facebook in classrooms. As far as the article shows, she is the only one who got distracted by Facebook, which doesnt guarantee that all her classmates or the students in the school experience the same disturbance. Secondly, she blames it on her friends' use of Facebook in class and in library for ruining her attention on studying. But she doesnt mention whether her friends make noise while using Facebook; or it is herself who is so curious on what other people are doing and easily loses her self-attention. And lastly, the evidence she cites from the The New York Time writer Motoko Rich doesnt help to strengthen her argument: "Hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading – diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans". The readers will cast doubt on this phrase. Are the social network cites like Facebook the only cause? How about online games and porn movies that poor performance in studying is contributed to. The argument, thus, is warranted.
In this article, H. Ostrowski uses claim of cause to convince us that Facebook is ruining our education by taking herself as an example. According to her, Facebook, the most popular social network today, does not only distract us from important things (spending too much time on Facebook, typing away on Facebook chat in classrooms), but also disturb our roomates who "incidently" get their eyes caught on the laptop addicts' screens. To strengthen her argument, the author also points out the result of a 2008 article from The New York Time about negative effects of social network sites on "slowing study habits". It's obvious that she tries to use ethos and pathos appeal to buy the readers' agreement.
However, her argument is not persuasive to me for some reasons. Firstly, she doesnt give the readers any number of students who are distracted by Facebook in classrooms. As far as the article shows, she is the only one who got distracted by Facebook, which doesnt guarantee that all her classmates or the students in the school experience the same disturbance. Secondly, she blames it on her friends' use of Facebook in class and in library for ruining her attention on studying. But she doesnt mention whether her friends make noise while using Facebook; or it is herself who is so curious on what other people are doing and easily loses her self-attention. And lastly, the evidence she cites from the The New York Time writer Motoko Rich doesnt help to strengthen her argument: "Hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading – diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans". The readers will cast doubt on this phrase. Are the social network cites like Facebook the only cause? How about online games and porn movies that poor performance in studying is contributed to. The argument, thus, is warranted.
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