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Cristian Hurtado
Professor Gifford
English-50(T-Th)
23 November 2015
Social Media taking over
Social media is a huge part of people's lives nowadays. People are constantly talking
about whatever is trending, the picture they just posted or the tweet they just tweeted. Americans
are constantly on this every second of the day. They do get a lot of information and communicate
with others as they share what they are doing. Social media can take over someones life. I feel
as if social media makes people into someone they are not. By this I mean, peoples authenticity
become more unreal and creates a false identity. This has impacted our lives way too much.
Social media also makes people awkward and not be able to communicate in person because
they just forgot how to act around another human being and be themselves. Social media has
impacted so many people's lives by making them into someone they are not, and interfered with
the way people communicated with each other.
A lot of people are not who they say they are on social media. They also dont say things
that they would say in real life. In fact, you cant always believe what social media tells you
because you dont know if its the truth or not. Social media is made of a bunch of people that
arent themselves and just want attention from others. For example, in the article The Way We
Live Now: I Tweet, Therefore I Am, by Peggy Orenstein, she states it makes the greasepaint
permanent, blurring the lines not only between public and private but also between the authentic
and contrived self. If all the world was once a stage, it has now become a reality TV show
(348). Peggy Orenstein means that people are just wanting attention from social media and are

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looking for ways to get it, but eventually do not realize what is real and what is fake. For
example, a girl I went to highschool with is probably the shyest person anyone knows, but when
it comes to social media, she has over five hundred thousand followers. She is known for her
pictures on Instagram and the way she does her makeup. People praise her and act like she is a
famous person but she is just like any other teenage girl. She is not who she says she is on social
media. When you see her in person you wouldnt even recognize that it is her because she looks
nothing like her pictures. The comments she gets on her pictures mostly say I love you or
youre such an amazing person which allows her to feel like she has many friends but in reality
she only has one or two friends. Like stated in the quote from the article How Computers
Change the Way We Think by Sherry Turkle, for those who are lonely yet afraid of intimacy,
information technology has made it possible to have the illusion of companionship without the
demands of friendship (342). If social media did not exist, then I am almost positive that people
would not know anything about this girl or even know who she is.
Social media has also affected the way people communicate socially. Many people do not
know how to speak to others using their mouths and their own words because they are use to
social media doing it for them. People communicate through every other communication device
but themselves nowadays. Inge Kral supports this in his article Shifting perceptions, shifting
identities: Communication technologies and the altered social, cultural and linguistic ecology in
a remote indigenous context by stating Importantly, the generational approach taken here sheds
light on the experiences of a people whose everyday life- worlds perceptions and habitual
modes of social inter-action and communication have been altered by communication
technologies. Kral is basically saying that people are changing their ways of communication by
using all the different types of communication devices and social media sources on them.

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Communicating this way makes all these people socially awkward and hesitant to go into the real
world and have a conversation with someone face-to-face.
Celebrities are the biggest group that influences others on social media. They just get the
most attention and there fans just want to live life how they post it on social media. One very
exotic celebrity that is trying to set her message of living a wild life is Miley Cyrus. Everyone
knows Miley Cyrus as the good girl gone bad by turning into the sweet pop star girl Hannah
Montana from Disney channel, to her insane half naked girl that still makes music. She posts
many things about her career and promoting concerts and stuff, but she also posts a lot about her
own life. Miley Cyrus shows a lot of nudity, drugs and selfies throughout her Instagram as well.
With all this craziness in her social media sites, people may still question if that is really who she
is, and if so, why does she want to set that message. I truthfully believe that Miley Cyrus wants
to set that idea that she is no longer that little girl from Disney and wants to get everyones mind
off that so they look at her as this crazy girl that she has become. Social media can either identify
you in a positive or negative way but it all depends on how you identify yourself.
I, myself do not have any social media. I do not like social media because to me, it is
made of people who like to be all about themselves and just want feedback about everything they
say or do. Social media just never was for me because I am not a social person, but when I am, I
like to talk to people face-to-face. Even though I know there is not that many people like me,
there is many people that base their lives around social media. It is an everyday thing for a lot of
this world. Overall, social media affected the way people communicate and make them socially
awkward. It also gives people the opportunity to become someone they are not.

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Works Cited
Kral, Inge. "Shifting Perceptions, Shifting Identities: Communication Technologies And The
Altered Social, Cultural And Linguistic Ecology In A Remote Indigenous Context."
Australian Journal Of Anthropology 25.2 (2014): 171-189. Academic Search Premier.
Web. 24 Nov. 2015.
Orenstein, Peggy. The Way We Live Now: I Tweet, Therefore I Am. Identity-a Reader for
Writers. Ed. John Scenters-Zapico. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 346-349.
Print.
Turkle, Sherry. How Computers Change the Way We Think. Identity-a Reader for Writers. Ed.
John Scenters-Zapico. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 339-345. Print.

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