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Kimberly Adams
Professor Sipin
English 110C
22 October 2014

Rhetorical Analysis of Popular Culture

Social Media is a big part of everyones life, especially teenagers. Any web site
that allows social interaction is considered a social media site. Including social
networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter; gaming sites and virtual
worlds such as Club Penguin, Second Life, and the Sims; video sites such as YouTube
and blogs. Many teenagers dont realize how much of their time they spend on social
media and the impact that it has on their body and their life in general. In the video
5 Crazy Ways Social Media is Changing Your Brain Right Now by the YouTube
channel AsapSCIENCE, they mention the psychological addiction, the inability to
multitask, phantom vibration syndrome, the release of dopamine, and the effect
social media has on relationships. These are only five of the many ways social media
can affect and have a negative impact on your brain.

This video is directed toward the average teenager who spends five hours a
day on social media. Teenagers need to be aware of how much social media they are
using and the problems that can occur with too much usage. Heavy social media use
can cause a teenagers brain to never full develop properly. This short informative

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video demonstrates how increased use of social media begins to wire the brain in
new ways causing an addiction not unlike drugs or alcohol. In this video they say
that social media is a psychological addiction and compares it to drug addictions.
This psychological addition can effect the development of the brain and a persons
ability to pay attention and make decisions. Also in the academic journal What Do
We Know About Social Media? it states that, Technology makes teenagers brain
development and developmental tasks more complicated today than ever before.
Phantom vibration syndrome, or perceived vibrations from a device that is not
really vibrating, is a recent psychological phenomenon that has attracted the
attention of the media and medical community. According to Eugenia Ives in the
iGeneration academic journal, 89% of undergraduates experience phantom
vibrations, and they experienced them about once every two weeks, on average.
According to asapSCIENCE, heavy media multitaskers performed worse on a test of
task-switching ability, likely due to reduced ability to filter out interference from the
irrelevant task set. Educating teenagers on the psychological addictions and the
potential affects on brain development is needed in order to make them aware of
the dangers of heavy social media usage. If teenagers are more aware they might be
more incline to reduce their usage.

This video is successful for many reasons. One being, that this video has
gotten over 1,600,000 views on YouTube. Another being that there are over 2,000
comments written by people who have watched this video and wanted to express
their opinions and how this video has changed how they see social media. One

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person commented how they arent going online again. Another was thankful for the
information. This video was original posted on youtube but has now spread to other
social media sites such as twitter, facebook, and blog sites. This video provides
logistical reasoning as to why too much social media is a bad thing. It catches
peoples attention and makes them aware of the problems social media can cause.
What is needed is more videos like this one on social media sites to help teenagers
become more aware of the dangers.

There are many ways social media can affect and have a negative impact on
your brain. Including the psychological addiction, the inability to multitask,
phantom vibration syndrome, the release of dopamine, and the effect social media
has on relationships. Since social media is here to stay, making teenagers more
aware of how much of their time they spend on social media and the impact that it
has on their body and their life in general is important. Teenagers need to
understand that heavy social media usage is akin to drug addiction. While there is
plenty of negative advertising about the use of drugs, there isnt the same negative
connotation for social media usage. Its actually the opposite, because teenagers
encourage each other to use social media. Teenagers need to be made aware of how
much time they spend on social media in order to stay healthy and not cause
damage to their developing brain. According to asapSCIENCE, social media sites are
now used by a third of the planet. The potential long-term effect and the total impact
that this relatively new phenomenon will have on culture is still unknown.

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Bibliography
5 Crazy Ways Social Media Is Changing Your Brain Right Now. Dir. AsapSCIENCE. 2014.
YouTube.
Gabriel, Fleur. "Sexting, Selfies And Self-Harm: Young People, Social Media And The
Performance Of Self-Development." Media International Australia (8/1/07Current) 151 (2014): 104-112. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 29 Nov.
2014.
O'Keeffe, Gwenn S., and Kathleen Clarke-Pearson. "The Impact of Social Media on Children,
Adolescents, and Families." The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents, and
Families. Pediatrics: The Official Journal of the Academy of Pediatrics, 28 Mar. 2011.
Web. 04 Nov. 2014.
Ives, Eugenia A. "iGeneration: The Social Cognitive Effects of Digital Technology on
Teenagers." Online Submission (2012). ERIC. Web. 29 Nov. 2014.
PRECOURT, GEOFFREY. "What Do We Know About Social Media?." Journal Of Advertising
Research 54.1 (2014): 4-5. Business Source Complete. Web. 29 Nov. 2014.