Find the Argument:
I believe that he could have two possible driving statements in his essay. The first one would be that social media is an accurate representation of oneself, as he claims that "Instagram gives an accurate depiction of a user's personality." He then supports this statement with a couple of supplemental anecdotes. This starting argument is found in the middle of the introductory paragraph.
The reason why I believe there could possibly be a different thesis statement is because he also has a set of points claiming that social media profiles/usage aren't an accurate representation of a person, due to the variable nature of usage and how a person chooses to express themselves. One's usage can depend on different factors in our day-to-day lives, and one can choose to alter their public perception by the way their profile is presented. This idea is spread throughout the last half of the paper, but is mainly concentrated in the closing paragraph.
Examples and Evidence:
Walker uses a good number of anecdotes to introduce and expand on his topics. For example, he starts off the paper referring to the time he looked over a number of different Instagram profiles in order to gauge the personality of the person behind the profile. He then uses this to explain how one of the profiles he viewed was not an accurate representation of the person, as the manner of one of the person's posts was different than what you'd typically see on a teenage boy's Instagram. Another set of anecdotes he chose to insert into his paper were related to his phone usage during the week, where he claimed that the nature of the COVID-19 quarantine orders has resulted in a higher screen time total that usual. He then uses this as a launch pad to talk about how social media usage can't define a person because of how much it can change over a period of time, even if it's just within a week or two.
There is one paraphrased piece of evidence in this paper found towards the end of the introductory paragraph from the article "Put Your Best Cyberface Forward" stating, "When people misrepresent themselves, it is often because they are attempting to express an idealized or future version of themselves." I believe he could've written a bit more about the context of this quote beforehand, or separated this idea and it's supporting content into a different paragraph in order to differentiate between the topics he was introducing.
I think that this paper could benefit from the use of additional outside evidence in order to 1) support his claims better and 2) provide cohesion between his claims and examples.
For the most part, the MLA format is correct, along with the citations and Works Cited page.
Big Picture:
I understand that the paper is supposed to be about the connection (or lack thereof) between one's true self in reality and the one that they present through their profile on social media. The only thing I'm a bit unclear about is what the thesis statement is supposed to be. Social media is representative of ourselves? Is it not representative of ourselves? The theme of the paper seems to change its course a couple of lines under the first possible driving statement. As a result, some of the claims are a bit vague or confusing, but also make sense once you consider the right thesis statement for that point. By adding some outside evidence from a scholarly journal or reputable website, his claims would be pretty solid. Additionally, by revising the conclusion to gather up all of the parts of the paper into a clear thesis statement, his paper would be even more solid.
Otherwise, I liked the way he was able to incorporate personal anecdotes into his paper! They were related to the the topic attached to them and interesting to read. The overall topic of the paper was interesting, and focusing on one aspect of his social media presence (Instagram) made it much easier to take in compared to tracking of all the different possible platforms.
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