Blog Post #3

For this blog post, I found the article “What is Social Networking Addiction?” by Leslie Walker (https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-social-networking-addiction-2655246). In the article, Walker argues that social media addiction has not been proven to be a disease or disorder, but can be defined as excessive use of social media platforms. She starts the article by defining what social media addiction in. In her words, social media addiction “could be considered someone with a compulsion to use social media to excess — constantly checking Facebook status updates or “stalking” people’s profiles on Facebook, for example, for hours on end” (Walker, 2017). After that, she brings up her counterargument that says that social media addiction causes symptoms of anxiety, depression and other disorders. The way that Walker chose to refute this claim, was in a “civil” manor as Harris describes. Instead of completely disregarding her counter argument, she uses words like “but” to suggest that there is more to it. A few paragraphs later she brings up another argument that says that social media addiction has ruined marriages. She provides a link in which she says has debunked the “myth” that Facebook can ruin 1 in 5 marriages. Then she says, “still, other researchers have concluded that social networking can make people feel better about themselves and more connected to society” (Walker, 2017). By using words such as “but” and “still” she is still recognizing her counter arguments without entirely shutting them down. Rather, she is suggesting that there are other ideas, studies and research that has been conducted that otherwise refute those who oppose to her views.