Analysis Of Sherry Turkle's Growing Up Tethered

As a social media active senior at Sigourney High School, I never thought about the validity of the points made in the essay I read. Every day of the week, we, as students are glued to a form of social media at some point in the day. Social media is at our finger tips at all times, whether it is on our one-on-one computers, or checking our phones between classes. Although social media is great in many aspects, it can draw kids away or shelter them from things they should experience in life. Author and professor Sherry Turkle writes in her essay, “Growing Up Tethered” that she believes kids these days are growing up with resources that may be hurting them as a person (Turkle 430). In this essay, Turkle says that kids don’t get to experience things they should because of cell phones and social media (Turkle 431). As years go …show more content…
Social media has became a place where some people live a different life. They create lives where they’re someone they aren’t. For example, in the essay, Turkle talks about a girl that has a abusive alcoholic father. In a game called Sims, she creates the same situation, except in the game she is both physically and emotionally strong (Turkle 437). The shaping of lives happens a lot on sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. People can and will post pictures of adventurous and fun things to make them seem like they have such a great life. The profile creation process is a strong contributor to this. When first creating an account the site ask several question to describe yourself. People start to twist the truth a little here and there to make themselves look like a more exciting or better person (Turkle 438). As the account making process comes to an end. they are a completely different person than they really are. The obvious other side of this is there are people who don’t abuse the profile process and truly are who they say they