Pros/Cons Exercises

Write your topic:

Smartphones and the public’s relationships                      

Write your tentative question:

Does smartphones benefit or ruin the public’s life, especially for the public’s relationships?

Write your tentative thesis (this should be a statement that is debatable, with which someone could disagree):

Nevertheless, Smartphones bring convenience to people’s lives, they indeed cause conflicts of  people’s relationships. People who do not arrange the usage time of smartphones hurt their relationships than smartphones themselves. Therefore, people should appropriately arrange the usage time of smartphone and increase the time of communicating with friends, families and partners in order to maintain relationships.

 

Claims that support/strengthen your argument

            Identify the claims that support your argument; for each one, draft one or more sentences.

What evidence (stats, studies, trends, anecdotes, expert opinion) will you need to support

each claim? Aim for a good mix of evidence. As you look for evidence at this step,
start compiling your annotated bibliography.

1. Smartphones allow parents and adolescents to contact frequently and freely. Frequency of adolescent-initiated calls for social support increases the communication and closeness between parents and adolescents. Similarly, parents ending calls with “I love you” may related to the adolescent’s feeling of caring and warmth, elevation self-esteem.

2. Smartphones leave the freedom of the romantic relationships. People can text to their partners via smartphones in order to speak out what they cannot say face-to-face, such as, expressing love and caring to each other.

3. Smartphones can tie partners together. The ubiquity of cell phones makes them available as tools dating partners use to maintain their romantic relationships. Contacting freely and sharing funny things via text and Internet increase the closeness between partners.

4. People prevent themselves from mobile addiction via controlling themselves of using smartphones.

 

Claims that undermine/weaken/challenge your argument

            Identify the claims that challenge your argument; for each one, draft one or more sentences.

What evidence (reason, stats, studies, trends, anecdotes, expert opinion) will you need to counter

this claim? Aim for a good mix of evidence. As you look for evidence at this step,
start compiling your annotated bibliography.

1. High frequency of parent-initiated calls to adolescents let adolescents perceive ubiquity of parental monitoring. This may cause conflict and quarrels between parents and adolescents and decreases the self-esteem of adolescents when they are staying with their friends.

2. Smartphones allow uncertainty about when, how, and how much to communicate-uncertainty to which relational partners need to respond. Sometimes, late for response increase quarrels and hurt the romantic relationship.

3. The ubiquity of smartphones arise the problem of keeping eyes on partners. Highly frequent calls and numerous texts make partners feel embarrassed and choky.

4. Mobile addiction reduces the concentration of adolescents during studying. Staring at the smartphone to look for something funny on Twitter or Facebook all the time may hurt the romantic relationship. Living in the virtual world for a long time causes the deficiency of communicating with others in the real world.