Example Persuasive Writing

Does Technology Make Us More Alone?

Technology is integrated into almost every field. From little children to aged adults,
technology has changed at least some aspects of our lives if not many aspects of our lives. We
can do our work online, we can shop online, and we can even order our pizza online without ever
needing to actually interact with another human face-to-face. Technology has contributed a great
number of good things to our society in fields like education and business, making it easier to
complete tasks in a very short amount of time (Hewko, 2016). These technological advances
make us more efficient and productive. Technology has also contributed bad things to our
society. Many people feel our society is now more fast-paced, more wasteful, and more self-
centered. Perhaps the biggest criticism that has come to light lately is that technology makes us
more lonely. Many personal applications like Facebook and Twitter, have revolutionized human
interaction (Hernandez, 2016). Some say that these new online interactions degrade face-to-face
interactions and prevent people from spending quality time with friends and family (Molloy,
2017; Hernandez, 2016). These results have very serious effects on many different groups of
people, but perhaps more drastically in younger generations that are being born into a world
where technology was never not known. Technology is increasing loneliness in children,
teenagers, and college students in our society today.
Technology makes children alone. Now we can see how children are having direct contact
with technology from a very early age. Hernandez (2016) states that 9 out of 10 children in
primary school spend more than 10 hours a day in contact with videogames and electronic
devices. This number is alarming if it represents isolated screen time. Neighmond (2014)
completed a field observation of 55 families in public restaurants and found that in 40 of the
families she observed, the parents used their phones during the meal, many of them only
intermittently putting it down to eat. The children observed were largely ignored, and in many of
the children, behaviors were observed that seemed to exhibit a desire for parental attention.
Ignoring children obviously leads to many other problems, like slowing their development and
creating strong family ties, but it will also certainly increase loneliness. As children are ignored,
they may turn more towards using smartphones to fill in the gap with entertainment, which will
only continue to increase the problem as they become more and more disconnected from the
people around them. Because giving greater attention to technology can lead to greater loneliness
in children, we need to become more aware of how much attention we give children when we are
with them.
Technology also makes teenagers more lonely. This loneliness can be largely attributed to the
way they turn to technology to meet various emotional needs. Many teenagers today are
extremely worried about being accepted by others, even before being accepted by themselves.
Feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, and uncertainty are quite normal as well as widespread. To
combat these feelings and help them feel accepted, some teenagers turn to technology to help
them feel validated. They look for the most exciting things to do or places to go so they can take
pictures to share with friends online, hoping that these pictures will encourage a positive response
from others. Another strategy many teenagers employ is creating modified profiles online to get
virtual friends (Hernandez, 2016; Molloy, 2017). An alarming 86.4% of teenagers modify their
identity or even pretend to be another person through social media (Molloy, 2017). This is
possibly one of the most problematic situations among young people. Rather than finding
authentic things to value about their lives, they find validation in things that are not only
temporary, but also false. This kind of falsification in combination with social pressure can be the
perfect weapon for those who use social networks to deceive and hurt others (Gonchar, 2016). As
teenagers do more online, they are increasingly withdrawn towards other people in person but
more and more open to people through social networks.
Finally, college students face loneliness due to technology. Bruni (2017) highlights this issue
by illustrating the difference between current and past generations of college students. In the past,
students needed to be more physically present. You couldn't take classes online, shop online, or
catch up with friends online. However, what perhaps causes more loneliness today is illustrated
by the fact that you also couldn't compare your life to your friends' lives online. Bruni (2017)
makes the point that if college students are alone in their dorm room scrolling through Facebook,
their friends' exciting lives (as evidenced in their pictures and posts), create in lonely college
students feelings of being disadvantaged because their friends are supposedly having so much
more fun than they are. Previous generations were perhaps less likely to experience these feelings
because they were less likely to be ex- posed to everyone else's exciting weekends. If you wanted
to know what your friends did last weekend, you had to ask them about it, which required a social
interaction. In this way, technology is making college students more lonely today.
While these three groups of people can clearly be negatively affected by technology, it is
important to note that many people do not view technology as completely isolating. There are
numerous ways that people can use technology to share experiences with people and encourage
more communication and forge stronger relationships. Technology can lead to a shared
experience for children, for example, by parents using an educational app with a child to practice
the alphabet or numbers. Teenagers can stay more connected to their parents, using technology,
and parents can use that communication to express love and validation to their teenagers that are
battling feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. College students who are far from friends and
family can use technology to video call with people at home to remind themselves of the social
support networks they have there. They can also use technology to meet more people, or to
establish a more genuine connection by learning about others through the stories they tell. These
uses clearly establish that technology doesn't have to isolate us.
These connecting benefits notwithstanding, it must be noted that technology is frequently
misused and does not serve to connect us as much as it isolates us. Many parents don't supervise
their children on technology (Gonchar, 2016) or ignore their children while they are looking at
their phones (Neighmond, 2014). Teenagers are frequently left on their own and parents are too
busy to connect with them. College students forego draining social interaction in favor of sitting
alone in their dorm while they look at their phone (Bruni, 2017). The real issue is that technology
use to connect us requires more effort than technology use that isolates us, and people frequently
don't put the effort required to maintain connection into their use of technology.
In sum, we can see that technology use can isolate young people from the time they are born
until they are ready to start their careers. Technology can cause us to become more withdrawn
and isolated, in spite of the constant ability to be seconds away from contact with hundreds of
friends and family who can help us feel connected and loved. The key to avoiding these negative
consequences is being aware of how technology is able to isolate us so that we can avoid the
negative consequences. We need to educate parents about how to use technology as a connecting
tool, rather than an isolating tool. We also need to teach future generations from the time they are
young how to properly use technology so that it does not isolate them from the relationships that
are crucial to their success. We should not teach people to fear technology, but to be aware of
how to use it properly. If we fail to do so, our society will eventually break apart into individual
islands of human existence.
Exercise 1: Annotate an Essay
Scan the essay below and annotate it according to the following directions.
Introduction
1. Draw a star next to the hook.
2. Draw a box around the background information.
3. Underline the thesis.
4. Circle the word or phrase that shows the thesis is an opinion.
Body Paragraphs
1. Underline the topic sentences that show the main idea or each section or paragraph.
2. Draw an arrow to show the words that show how the topic sentences support the thesis
statement. Draw the arrow from the word(s) in the topic sentence to the word(s) in the thesis
statement.
3. Number the supporting detail ideas. (1, 2, 3...) How many supporting details did the author use
to explain their main idea?
4. Circle the cohesive device words and phrases
5. Highlight all in-text citations.
6. Draw an arrow from each in-text citation to their matching full citation on the reference page.
Conclusion
1. Underline the restated thesis.
2. Circle the key words that are kept from the thesis statement or that are replaced with
synonyms.
3. Box the background information, summary, or global extension.
4. Draw a star next to the concluding sentence.
5. Label the concluding sentence. What type is it?
Reference Page
1. Underline the name of the section "Reference".
2. Circle the author's last name(s)
3. Draw a star by the year of publication.
4. Draw a box around the title of the article, website, or book.
5. Label the source. What type is it? Is it an article from a journal or newspaper, website, or
other?

Exercise 2: Analyze an Essay

1. Does the introduction provide the general information a reader needs in order to
understand the topic?
2. Does the introduction end with an effective thesis? Does it match the style of the essay?
3. Do each of the body paragraphs begin with an effective topic sentence?
 4. Are the body paragraphs sequenced in a logical order?
5. Look at each body paragraph. Do the supporting sentences support the topic sentence?
6. Look at each body paragraph. Are the supporting sentences sequenced in a logical order?
7. Look at each body paragraph. Is there enough development? Are there more details or
examples that would help the reader?
8. Look at each body paragraph. Does the concluding sentence close the paragraph
logically?
9. Does the conclusion paragraph start by restating the thesis?
10. Does the conclusion paragraph have a suggestion, prediction, or opinion at the end?

Sources
Bruni, F. (September 2, 2017). The real campus scourge. The New York Times.
Gonchar M. (October 16, 2016). Does technology make us more Alone? The New YorkTimes.
Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/learning/does-technology-make-us-more-
alone.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Flearning-student-opinion.
Hernandez L. (2016). Does technology make us more alone? Retrieved from
https://boomessays.com/blog/essay-does-technology-make-us-more-alone
Hewko J. (2016). Technology is making us feel more alone. Is a return to volunteerism the
answer? Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/technology-is-making-us-
feel-more-alone-volunteerism/
Molloy M. (2017). Too much social media increases loneliness and envy. The Telegraph,
Technology. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/03/06/much-social-
media-increases-loneliness-envy-study/
Neighmond, P. (2014). For the children's sake, put down that smartphone. Retrieved from
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/04/21/304196338/for-the-childrens-sake-put-
down-that-smartphone