If social media has yet to negatively impact your life in some way, it will eventually. Whether it is because your ex posted a picture with his new girlfriend, your best friend uploads that embarrassing video of you at a party last weekend, or someone you dislike posts something rude about you on Twitter for everyone to see, an experience similar to this is bound to happen. Issues from social media may not be severe, but can still be just as hurtful and embarrassing to someone, which can cause greater issues. We as a generation need to realize that, whether we like it or not, our lives are public for everyone to see once something is posted on the Internet. We as a generation are so obsessed with advertising what we do, where we are, and with whom minute-by-minute, that we almost forget to just simply live our lives. This topic is very interesting to me, because it is having the greatest impact on my generation, which is something the past generations cannot relate to. The fact that someone's reputation and life could be ruined by one post is absolutely crazy, but once something is out there on the Internet it is there forever. This topic affects my personal values because I believe that although social media may have its benefits, it has done more damage than good. I have had experiences with Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat that were not terrible but left me wishing social media just was not a thing for people to constantly be able to access. I am qualified to write about this because I have gone through negative experiences with social media as well as most of my friends and people my age. I have always been intrigued by this issue, and want to research more about how others have been negatively affected as well. 

This first article, "Sexting, Selfies and Self-harm: Young People, Social Media and the Performance of Self- Development." focuses on how social media is harmful in the process of self-development for mainly adolescents. Social media allows a person to document and advertise everything that is done in one's life, instead of just simply living. Criticism and judgment is more susceptible to happen when there is more out on Internet to be seen. More problems than expected arose from the use of social media, such as sexting, cyber bulling, and inappropriate pictures that are posted by others and cannot be removed. This article contains multiple argumentative sections in which the use of social media is being shown to cause more harm than good. Adolescents in today's generation are almost expected to post every breathing moment of their lives, which is how the younger generations are being raised as well. This article is biased because the author is stating his opinion on the situation of social media instead of just stating facts. He acknowledges the problem and chooses to inform his readers about his views on the issue, which makes the article biased because it is his personal opinion. The author, Fleur Gabriel has great credibility and experience, which makes this source valid. He is a doctor of philosophy and has a bachelor of arts in honors and communications. 

The next article, "Social Media Responsibility in Today's Constant-Contact World" is more informative about the different aspects of social media, and how it is a great source of advertisement, but is in no way private. Once something is posted online it is there for whomever to screen shot and do as they wish with the post. The amount of adults who have joined social media sites in the past year has increased by ten percent, which shows how it is continuously growing, even for adults. Businesses thrive off of social media, but not everything needs to be published for the world to see. The article is an informative article, so it contains more facts and statistics about social media to act as a less biased source. Although his article is short, it focuses more on the business aspect than anything, which could be used to take a different approach while researching. Social media is intended to be used for promoting businesses and to be something positive, but it ends up doing more harm than good. The author of this article is John Iwanski, and he is credible on this topic because he has 20 years of experience in the social industry of business. 

Lastly, the third source "Is Social Media Ruining Our Kids?" looks at how social media is affecting kids and adolescents today in negative ways. There have been studies done that are relating depression to social media and how it could be partially responsible.  In Sreedhar's article he found that 54% of students reported that they are "experiencing overwhelming anxiety in the past 12 months and that 32.6% felt so depressed that it was difficult to function." The statistics of adolescents who have felt depressed or suicidal because of social media is scary, but we can only blame ourselves. This article gives helpful tips to parents in order to try and help their kids from being sucked into the social media world. The author of this article Potarazu Sreedhar is a credible source because he is a well-known advocate for health care and appears frequently on television to talk about issues. People do not have to agree with his thoughts on social media, but his knowledge and article is definitely credible. 

This research question can be arguable because some people may disagree that social media is not destroying our society, but instead the people using it are. Also people could argue that social media is completely positive and only does positive things for our society. So far in the sources I have viewed I have yet to find anything too different, because I am only researching topics that would support my argument. The different perspectives of my sources affect my own views, because they help support my claim and add to the credibility of my argument. One of my articles is informative which allows my research to contain facts and statistics from an unbiased author. It is beneficial to have both informative and argumentative sources that way the audience can see unbiased and biased information. As of now there are no changes that I want to make because I like my argument, and think it is strong. 

