My Worthy Opponent Is Wrong
Social media is now the main source for everything a millennial desires; communication, quick answers and fashion trends. Most young adults can not go very long without checking their phones and its has become more and more evident that an addiction issue is at hand. The results from excessive use of social media are believed by many to include depression and jealousy, leading to an overall dissatisfaction with life. My goal is to further prove this hypothesis. Blogger Janet Anthony’s article titled “8 Proven Ways How To Use Social Media for Motivation” has not only proven her to be my rightful opponent, but the article itself is flawed and potentially gives dangerous advice.
First off, making the claim that social media is good for recharging the brain sounds a bit absurd from the jump; and unfortunately for Anthony, the source provided to back this claim actually disproves it altogether. Yes, taking a break and allowing your body to re-charge is extremely important and although this is agreed by both Antony and Neil Patel (author of the source,) however their approach to re-charing are quite opposite. A warning on what not to do during this break, clear as day, states from that same origin to “stay away from your screen.” Although Anthony may believe her conclusion to be true, the evidence given for her claim was insufficient.
Social relationships are important to one’s mental health, no doubt. Another reason for using social media for motivation, as quoted by Anthony is “they can support you when times are dark;” ‘they” is referring to the people you surround yourself with, as explained further in the article. Although this is not relevant to the main argument, this evidence could be trying to prove that social media relationships are now more essential than human to human interaction, which could never be the case. Also, having followers does not qualify as having “people around us.” We are social beings and we need real, social interaction to survive in our environment.
Now, let’s make it known that social media can be motivating to a certain extent; her claims, however prove her lack of research on the matter. Inspirational pages and online support can surely improve one’s motivation to a certain degree, but turning to social media to reach their goals is far from the approach people should be taking. Most motivational pages are based on false realities and there is such a lack of truth on social media that you can never know if the advice given on these pages is sincere. People will only post what they want you to see and this leads users to expect to be able to reach unrealistic goals, leading to depression; the reason you can’t get your body to look like your favorite instagram model no matter how accurately you follow her workouts is because although the model may be displaying herself working out healthily, what she is not showing you is her daily battle with anorexia or bulimia. Motivational pages may be just as unrealistic as social media itself.
Sources
Anthony, Janet. “8 Proven Ways How To Use Social Media for Motivation.” The Next Scoop, The Next Scoop, 2018, thenextscoop.com/social-media-for-motivation/.
Patel, Neil. “When, How, and How Often to Take a Break.” Inc., 11 Dec. 2014, http://www.inc.com/neil-patel/when-how-and-how-often-to-take-a-break.html.
Umberson, Debra, and Jennifer Karas Montez. “Social Relationships and Health: A Flashpoint for Health Policy.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior, vol. 51, no. 1_suppl, 2010, doi:10.1177/0022146510383501.
Counterintuitive 
I may not have time to do a thorough feedback session for any one student’s Rebuttal argument this morning, Namaste, but I’m trying to offer something to everyone. Let’s look at your first paragraph first.
Punctuation note. You’ll want to start your series off with a colon
Grammar/Usage Note. Cannot is always one word.
The results from excessive use of social media are believed by many to include depression and jealousy, leading to an overall dissatisfaction with life. My goal is to further prove this hypothesis.
Logic/Style Note. You use a not only/but also structure to add up two things that don’t add up. You don’t need it.
You’re adopting a first-person voice here, Bean, usually frowned on in academic papers. If you’re doing that only here, where you take aim at a particular opponent and get a little personal, that’s more defensible than a paper that uses I throughout.
I have time for an observation on your second paragraph too.
While brevity is always a worthy goal, you’ve spent time in your introduction to identify Anthony as your primary adversary, so before you slam dunk her, you need to give her point of view a little room to prove itself substantial and clear. Your entire second paragraph is devoted to SOMEONE ELSE’S refutation of Anthony, whose entire article (perhaps) is reduced to “social media is good for recharging the brain.”
To review. It’s good that you’ve found a source to refute. It’s wonderful that you have a source with which to counterargue. Anthony needs to seem worthy of refuting before you take her down.
I’m going to bother someone else for a bit. Reply here and leave this post in Feedback Please. I’ll return when I’ve heard from you again.
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I understand what you’re saying! I’ll revise this for you and maybe you can observe my rebuttal in its entirety with more ease then 🙂
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I haven’t seen any changes since NOV 08, Bean, so I’m taking this back out of Feedback Please. I’ll move on to other students until I see your updates at least to the first two paragraphs.
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will get back to you shortly
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back in feedback.
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Are you just warming up with comments about fashion, Bean, or is there a purpose to that choice? Perhaps you mean to suggest that because it serves so many purposes both trivial and not, the phone is a good candidate for overuse, the same way eating disorders develop from our ordinary human need for regular meals. If there’s a way to build a little more argument into your every claim, always do so. My example there was an example.
not only but also constructions are used to amplify one claim with a second similar claim, not to show contrasts. Here you use it wrong.
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Your second paragraph contains an effective not only but also construction.
two misspellings in “persusassion is necesary”
Quotation punctuation. Either use a comma before a standalone statement [A warning states, “Stay away from your phone.’] or incorporate the quoted material into the grammar of your own sentence [The article says to “stay away from your phone.”].
The paragraph is very effective at describing and refuting Anthony’s claim, using just as much reasoning to rebut the claim as Anthony used to make it. That both the claim and its refutation seem relatively trivial is my only objection, Bean. Not much is at stake here.
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Want to eliminate some pronouns?
[The social interactions one has can directly affect one’s mental health.]
Social interactions affect mental health.
Social interactions affect our mental health.
Since “affect” can be beneficial or hazardous, the sentence doesn’t say much. It could.
Maybe save it for the end of the paragraph and pair it with your last sentence:
Real, positive, human-to-human interactions benefit our mental health.
Ditto the advice from P2 for this quotation as well, Bean.
Either: is, “They
Or: is that “they
You learned the lesson about keeping punctuation inside the quotation marks; unfortunately, you’re applying the “periods and commas” rule to a semicolon. Too bad. Anyway, the semicolon is clumsy here. Use a period. [And keep it inside the quotation mark.]
We need to fix the disagreement between singular “one” and the plural “themself.”
1. THEM can’t be applied to one.
2. THEMSELF is not a word.
Do you really need all the pronouns?
You’re not considering them “real human” interactions, so why call them “people” one surrounds . . . ?
You could say “assume she is referring to followers, “friends,” and familiar avatars who post to shared pages.
Otherwise, if you’re granting them humanity, you could still deny them pronouns by calling them, “people who are helpful in a crisis,” for example.
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You start your paragraph with two identically structured sentences:
IC; however, IC [where IC is Independent Clause]
Not an auspicious start, but then the second sentence completely gets away from you:
What you say about the fake personae making fake claims wouldn’t refute evidence that the pages motivate readers to exercise. [On the other hand, if the exercise is presented as a cancer cure, or if investing in satellite radio is presented as a sure-fire investment, then the deception is dangerous for a different reason, and we would hope the pages and their authors DON’T MOTIVATE.] Fat guys who give good diet advice, though, shouldn’t be criticized.
Make sense?
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