Rhetorical Analysis

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Oct 30, 2023

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Hayden Thompson Professor McKinney English 1020 12 February 2023 Analysis of “Does Using Social Media Make You Lonely?” Is social media bad for our well-being? Does using it too often make us feel lonely? David Ludden dives into this in his article titled, “Does Using Social Media Make You Lonely?” Ludden is a professor of psychology at Georgia Gwinnett College. In this article, the intended audience is Facebook users who use it on a normal everyday basis, but it could also apply to people who use other social media platforms on a daily basis as well. Ludden uses college students, specifically, who frequently use Facebook. I interpreted the main points to be that using Facebook and social media too much diminishes your well-being, and that we use social media as a way to avoid real-life interactions, which in many cases makes people develop social awkwardness. Personally, I think that the author’s purpose of writing this article is to give a “wake-up call” to the audience. He wants to help people realize that overusing social media can be unhealthy for you and negatively affect your social skills. Early in “Does Using Social Media Make You Lonely?”, the author does a wonderful job explaining why social media may have a damaging effect on our well-being, and to get the reader on his side he appeals to the readers logic and reasoning, also known as logos. Throughout the article, Ludden uses logos several times. He appeals to the reader’s logic and reasoning several times by talking about scientific studies that support his argument. Ludden states that there are scientific studies that point to social media use being bad for your well-being. He begins the essay by talking about the beginning of the internet and how there were already assumptions that it would have a negative effect on our social lives. The fearmongers worried that rather than going out like usual, people would begin to sit in front of their computer screens all day and communicate with people online that they have never even met in person before (Ludden). Many of us know from personal experience, that the fearmongers seem to have been correct with their assumptions about the internet. To support his thesis of social media being bad for you, Ludden talks about a study that involves college first-year students and college seniors. The study showed that the more Facebook friends a first-year student had, the less socially adjusted they were to the college environment. However, the study showed that the more Facebook friends that a college senior had, the more socially adjusted that they were. As it turns out, going further into the study, it showed that the first-year students were using Facebook to stay in contact with their friends from high school, while the seniors were using Facebook to communicate with their friends on campus (Ludden). So, it seems as if Ludden may have been suggesting that the particular way that you use social media is what determines whether it is bad for your well- being. This study somewhat helps prove Ludden’s claims, but at the same time it contradicts them. It proves that using social media often does not have a negative effect on a person’s life. The evidence is reliable as well, because the people that conducted the research happened to be a professional psychologist at Duke University, Jenna Clark, and some of her colleagues.

Although Ludden relies on logos throughout much of his article, he also uses ethos multiple times. In attempts to gain the reader’s trust, he mentions “scientific studies” many times and also talks about a study conducted by a Duke University psychologist, Jenna Clark, as seen above. In his article he says that “Does using social media make us lonely?” is the wrong question to be asking and then tries to gain the reader’s trust by stating, “At least that’s the conclusion Duke University psychologist Jenna Clark and her colleagues came to in an article they recently published in the journal, Current Directions in Psychological Science.” This offers excellent support for Ludden’s argument by providing the point of view from professionals in the field of psychology. This way, his argument is much easier to agree with and more reliable. There is not much statistical evidence besides the experiment with college first-year students and college seniors, but Clark and her colleagues do warn of two “pitfalls” in social media. The two pitfalls that Ludden mentioned from Clark and her colleagues are self-comparisons and something called “social snacking”. Social snacking is described as “...activities such as browsing through other people’s profiles or reading other people’s comments without making any of your own” (Clark). Personally, I have done this myself, but the lack of statistics on social snacking lessens its importance in Ludden’s argument. While some people do probably social snack, there also may be a sizable number of people who do not. Therefore, the audience may not be able to relate to this part of the argument. Ludden does use very pathos throughout his argument. However, he does use it towards the very end of the article by talking about loneliness while using social media, which appeals to the reader’s emotions. “But if you find yourself passively browsing through social media to take your mind off your loneliness, you’d be better off spending some time in self-help instead” (Ludden). This quote does support his argument because by appealing to the reader’s possible feeling of loneliness while they use social media, they may end up agreeing with Ludden’s argument of social media being unhealthy for their well-being. In conclusion, Ludden did a fantastic job of using evidence to prove his claim of using social media being unhealthy for person’s social life and their well-being. He relied heavily on logos, used ethos several times, and briefly used pathos. Personally, I think his argument has multiple good points on why overusing social media is a dreadful thing. Backing up his claims with psychologists and their points of view especially helped prove his argument to be true.

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