Facebook Rhetorical Analysis

Facebook is a site from the internet which was founded to help people keep in touch with their friends or make new friends all over the world. It has become one of the most popular sites that are visited in the internet. Statistics show that there are 500 million active users and 50% must log in on any day that would be sampled. These members use an average of 700 billion minutes in a month. Sarah Kliff might have selected to use this site because it is most popular among people (White, 2006).

The article by Sarah Kliff was written with the aim of showing how people spend too much time online. It happens because there are social sites that have made people to consume excess time and it is harmful. The writer has used the facebook site to generally represent other sites in the internet.  For example, Sarah says that several times she used to log in to facebook instead of using that time to read or work. She also says that she wasted a lot of time thinking about the content of her facebook account yet it was unnecessary. This suggests that the some social sites found from the internet are making people to lose concentration on what they should be doing (Slevin, 2000).  

This article is a report of the writer who talks of how she is consumes so much time on the internet, in a social site called facebook. The article is biased because it only criticizes the site and does not talk about the beneficial part. Sarah only mentions the negative consequences brought about by being a facebook fanatic. Am sure there are advantages of joining this site and not only disadvantages (Wallace, 2001).

The target audience of this article is internet fans who have turned to be fanatics because they think and spend too much time in the internet at the expense of other important things that should be attended to. It happens that most people who sign up for membership in this site are young people. From the article, Sarah mentions that she logged in to facebook instead of studying. This means that she was a student hence a young person. She also says that she would easily know who has broken up with their partners, by checking relationship status. This is also an indication that most members are young adults (O'Bannon, 2009).

Time and place are two factors that are likely to have inspired the writer to compose this article. Technology has evolved with time and hence made facilities like internet to be as close as in our homes. This has enabled people to easily access it and become members of sites like facebook. Another reason that is brought by time is that phones are now data enable so people can browse any time and in any place. Sarah says hat she joined facebook in 2004 and through out the time she has observed the impact it has brought to her others. Therefore, time and place indeed have contributed to the writing of this article (Cennamo, 2009).

The kind of approach used at the beginning of the article is one that brings out the character of Sarah, which has been influenced by being a fan of facebook. The way she explains that when she wakes up the first thing she thinks about is her laptop and logging in to facebook. Before doing anything important she finds herself perusing facebook photographs of her brother. This suggests that she is acting like an addict. It gives weight in describing how the writer is carried away by the site and brings out the effects of being too much of a fan of the internet (Shelesky, 2003).

The article is very direct on its thesis. At the beginning of the article, the writer uses illustrations that put on so much emphasis on the theme of the article. Sarah uses examples to show how she spends so much time on facebook, unnecessarily (Shaffer, 2008). For example she says that the first thing she does when she wakes up is to check how her laptop is placed on the futon. The first sentence of her article also communicates so directly that she is a facebook fanatic (Rosenberg, 2004). The effect created is an impression of how people use excess time surfing or browsing the internet and according to Sarah it has become worse than the way we use phones and emails. She is concerned about how people preoccupy their minds with the thoughts of facebook, for instance how they will come up with well planned list of interest to putt on their profiles (Mossberger, Tolbert & McNeal, 2008).

The writer has used very clear language that is straight to the point and very illustrative. The whole article is full of instances that the writer has used in trying to put across her message on the impact the internet has created. She has used very few descriptive words and all the rest are personal experiences that are more comprehensible (Katz & Rice, 2002).

The article brings out a logic or reality that exists in the societies we live in. This kind of addiction to the internet sites has even changed peoples' character and some of them are not being their real selves. A good example is the writer, Sarah. She explains how her lifestyle has changed because of being manipulated by facebook (Kalathil & Boas, 2003). She says she has come to dislike the way facebook has made her become an indoor person because she is always logging in to facebook. She has even minimized the way she hangs out at Central Park because all she thinks is about facebook (Kagami, Tsuji & Giovannetti, 2004).

At the conclusion she has used a writing style called irony. She says that as she was writing the article on facebook and criticizing it, the ironical thing is that she is being distracted by thinking about facebook because she just can't help it. This is the same way most young people have been carried away and they seem to be hooked or addicted to such sites from the internet (Frankel, 2006). They are either browsing or thing about these sites, just like the way Sarah says that she has observed that everyday most of her friends have to make changes in their profiles. It makes her wonder about how people become preoccupied and distracted because they are thinking about how they will come up with well organized information for their profiles (D'Urso, 2002).

Sarah Kliff has used tactics or writing styles that have assisted her to communicate her intended message and make sure that the audience or readers of her article have received it with the intended impact as well as creating the correct impression that she wanted to create. Some of the styles used are use of personal experience, the choice of language and others that may be found in the article (Ducke, 2007). The article is full of personal experiences that the writer has used with the aim of emphasizing exactly what she wants to say. A few of the experiences she talks are: before she thinks of brushing her teeth in the morning, she realizes that she has gone through 400 photos that were recently posted by her brother (Comer, 2008).

Another example is even as she is writing the article about criticizing facebook, she can't help being distracted by its thought. She also says that when she was in college she spent time in facebook instead of studying or working. The other evident style was the choice of language she has used (Cate, 1998). I find it simple yet very impacting because she is really understandable in what she says. She has not used any jargon or complex vocabulary neither has she used formal language nor vulgar. As much as she is talking about the negativities of facebook, she has used acceptable informal language. The choice of language is very appropriate and suites the audience (Cebulko, 2007).

When I read this article it dawned on me how people have allowed themselves to be carried away by the technology advancements that are now manipulating them and making people to lose focus of their other important errands and responsibilities which they should attend to. People should realize that these social sites should be visited at leisure time or after work and study (Burrows, Ellison & Woods, 2005). Being enslaved by the internet sites suggests that we are being beaten by our own technology. The internet is there for us, and not vice versa. This article has enlightened me to watch out not to become an internet fan in a harmful way. It is now time for people to evaluate how much the internet has impacted on them negatively, and then should change for the better (Al, 2002).