Courtney Whitener

Composition 1

Professor McGriff

March 08 2021

Argumentative Essay

Growing up I didn’t have a cell phone, my mom would send us kids outside to where we

would make mudpies, roam the woods, climb trees, ride our bikes to the house down the street

to see if they could come outside and play with us. We would drink water out of the water hose,

and whatever house we were at we’d have sandwiches our mom’s made us for lunch. Those

are the best memories I have. I wish kids nowadays got to experience what we experienced

back then. Now you can’t even go to dinner without kids needing a phone to eat to watch a

movie to make them concentrate, or as they grow they’re all over social media. I think as time

goes on and people grow, social media is just gonna take over more than it already has. There

are some good things about texting and there are some bad things about it and I want to share

my opinions with you such as how I agree with some of the articles I will cite and why and how I

disagree with them and why.

John McWhorter acknowledges that communication is different with cell phones in his

video “Texting is killing language” and I have to agree with him. One thing John stated in his

video was “Texting is very loose in its structure no one thinks about capital letters or punctuation

when one texts but then again do you think about that when you talk? No.” I do agree with this,

when you’re texting you really don’t think about capital letters or punctuation but do you think

about those things when you’re talking to someone? Probably not.

According to this article “Texting can have a positive effect on your emotional and physical

health” which was published by the Washington post, makes a great deal of good points that I

also agree with. One thing that opened my eyes about how texting is good was “Think of texting
friends and family and consider who might be feeling lonely or facing a difficult situation.” (Davis

and Turkle) Additionally, another positive I got out of this article is for shy people with social

anxiety they kinda get to have a break from it, they don’t have to be face to face and their

anxiety does not have to surface.

I think the English language is beautifully put, I think you shouldn’t change one thing about

it. It’s also the hardest language to learn, only because there are so many words and slang put

into it. Texting instead of meeting in person has its disadvantages in defense also, you text in

shorter terms, such as “LOL, BRB, L8R” and etc. I feel like that is the type that destroys the

English language. Paul Goodman who is the author of the article “12 Disadvantages of Texting.”

Obviously listed 12 reasons why texting is a disadvantage, I chose 5 that stood out to be the

most important to me. One reason is, Misunderstandings. Misunderstandings in texting often

happen a lot more than you think. If you text someone while you’re upset they might take it 17

different ways then someone else would. Sometimes I have to ask my friends how they

understood it to broaden my thinking. This could all be vanished with just a face to face talk. The

second reason is, Sleeping problems. Some people can’t fall asleep due to them being on their

phone texting their peers and waking up tired and repeating the same schedule. Third reason is,

Cost. The cost of having a phone is expensive no doubt. There are a lot of bills put into having a

phone and we all know the cost of it considering we all have one plus more than that, TV’s,

computers, IPads and etc. Fourth reason is Texting and Driving. This is a whole different

subject, people losing their lives, people making other people losing their lives over answering a

phone call, a text message, a facetime, anything to distract them. Fifth reason would be, a

General Distraction. That also goes along with the fourth reason, you can barely talk to

someone without their phone being a distraction, you can’t go on a date with someone without a

phone being present. Everything nowadays stems off of having a cell phone. You can go without

having a cell phone but it is now not recommended.

 Cell phones matter especially right now because with this pandemic cell phones have

helped us out a lot, like when you can’t see your loved one you can facetime or text them, call

them, zoom them. This is such a broad topic that there are so many opinions on it. I love my

phone, I love communicating with family members in different states, as I’m sure others do too. I

love how phones have made it easier for us to communicate but I do hate that also because

instead of a gestured appearance you get a text message. It is easier to make friends over

social media but do you really know that person just by meeting them on the phone?

Work Cited:

https://www.newarkcsd.org/cms/lib/NY01000239/Centricity/Domain/267/Texting%20Article.pdf

https://youtu.be/VrQLDT_1Q_k

https://turbofuture.com/cell-phones/Disadvantages-of-Texting