What's The Matter With Kids Today Analysis

Secondly, people should moderately use technology because an over-use of technology, such as in the use of social media sites, causes a vulnerability in real-life social skills. In “What’s the Matter with Kids Today?,” Amy Goldwasser incorrectly points out that children should use their form of reading and writing in their social lives and apply it to education. Goldwasser refutes against the claims of the older generation in that the Internet has negative consequences on children and instead, argues that the Internet beneficially impacts children because it is a form of communication that is composed of a generation of writers, activists, and storytellers. She believes that the internet has encouraged teenagers to “read and write for fun;
She claims that although social media provides endless potential for connection and allows for self-expression, it has also altered how people spend their time as well as how they display and construct their own identity. Reflecting on her the impact of her usage of Twitter, Orenstein questions, “when every thought is externalized, what becomes of insight? When we reflexively post each feeling, what becomes of reflection? When friends become fans, what happens to intimacy? The risk of the performance culture, of the packaged self, is that it erodes the very relationships it purports to create, and alienates us from our own humanity” (Orenstein, par. 7). Orenstein uses rhetorical questioning to allow her audience to take into account the irony that comes with the purpose of social media. The author claims that as one focuses on displaying oneself and getting more friends or likes online, social media often leads to losing “insight...reflection...intimacy” as the “performance culture erodes the very relationships it purports to create.” She uses oxymorons in her questioning to prove that with the use of social media, the true intention of promoting oneself becomes obsolete as she asserts that when “every thought is externalized,” insight is diminished, and when users “reflexively post each feeling” there is no reflection of oneself. When the goal of social media sites and apps is to be social and make “friends,” it often transform into an intent associated with the quantity instead of the quality of the relationship. As social creatures who develop relationships, building social media relationships sometimes “alienates us from our own humanity” because we tend to focus on displaying an image of