Rhetorical Analysis Of How Social Media Is A Toxic Mirror

Instagram features a post showing a picture of a celebrity looking perfect in every single way. Editing has done this to the celebrity’s body; under all the editing, they look like everyone else. The person admiring this picture wants to be like them, look like them, and plain out be them. Then they take a look at themselves and think they aren’t good enough. Looking into the article from TIME magazine, “How Social Media Is a Toxic Mirror”, the author, Rachel Simmons, explains how, as well as why social media hurts self image. On the other hand the article from Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context, “Body Image”, is just the opposite due to the fact it is against the standpoint of social media harming self image. While analyzing articles from

Of the two articles, both of them use this rhetorical technique in order to convince the reader the credibility of the persuader. The article from TIME magazine, “How Social Media Is a Toxic Mirror”, is written by Rachel Simmons. At the top of the article it explains, “Rachel Simmons is a leadership development specialist at Smith College and the author of Odd Girl Out and The Curse of the Good Girl.” Then a little later in the paragraph it presents, “For at least a decade, educators like me have argued that social media’s biggest threat was its likeness to a bathroom wall, letting teens sling insults with the recklessness that comes only with anonymity.” These statements are examples of ethos because it is showing how the author is considered a professional so the audience would be more likely to agree with her. Also by stating that the author is a developmental specialist, it shows that she knows how the development of teens work and what factors affect them positively and negatively. Secondly, the article from Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context, “Body Image”, also uses a form of ethos within it. It states towards the beginning of the first paragraph, “Body image is defined by health professional Carla Rice as an ‘individual’s experience of his or her body’.” This sentence uses ethos because by stating that this quote is from a health professional, the audience is more likely to believe the

While taking a look at the article from TIME magazine, “How Social Media Is a Toxic Mirror”, many studies are held that give factual information to the audience. One of the examples state, “The most vulnerable users, researchers say, are the ones who spend most of their time posting, commenting on and comparing themselves to photos. One study found that female college students who did this on Facebook were more likely to link their self worth to their looks.” That study is put into the article in order to show the audience how social media links self worth to the users’ looks. In comparison, the article from Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context, “Body Image”, also contains ethos such as the example, “According to a 2015 report by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit advocacy group that monitors children’s media, more than one-half of girls… as young as six think that they need to be thinner, and about one-quarter of children as young as seven have engage in some sort of dieting behavior. The report also showed that girls who saw their mothers as being unhappy with their bodies were more likely to report being unhappy with their own.” This statement was used by the author to persuade the audience that social media isn't the reason of negative self worth, but instead other reasons such as mothers and how their children