有一天，我的妹妹，怀孕六个月了，得了重感冒。她想吃药，但她不知道这药会不会对孩子造成伤害。她打开电脑，上网搜索且发布一个问题寻找对感冒药的安全信息。之后，她做出了一个正确的决定。从上面的例子中，我们可以看到，社交媒体对我们的日常生活起到了作用。社会媒体的结果是什么？有些人可能会承认，社交媒体近年来不断扩大，他们感觉到社会媒体的入侵。他们中的大多数人认为，他们仍然几乎退出“文化2”，这是一个时期，我们不仅可以得到别人的信息，但也产生了信息公开。从我的观点来看，社交媒体已经大大改变了我们今天的生活方式。我们的生活方式已经有了第二十个世纪的不同。同时，社交媒体也改变了与人们联系的方式。在同一个地方，我们更容易受到来自社会媒体的影响。

One day, my sister, who has been pregnant for six months, caught a bad cold. She wanted to take medicine for her cold but she wondered whether the medicine will do harm to the baby. She turned on the computer, went online and googled or posted a question to search for information on the safety of the cold medicine. After that, she made a right decision. From the examples above, we can see that social media has put an effect on our daily life. In what ways has society changed as a result of social media? Some people may concede that social media has been expanding these years and they feel the invasion of the social media. Most of them hold an opinion, however, that they are still almost out of "Culture 2.0", which is a period when we can not only get information from others, but also produce messages to public. From my point of view, social media has dramatically changed many ways we live today. Our lifestyle has been so different compared to 20th century. Also, Social media changes the ways to connect to people. In the same place, it is much more easier for us to get influenced from social media.
 

First and foremost, social media has changed our lifestyle so much that we can not even get rid of it. When we think of how we live everyday, we might come to realize that we are immersed in social media. We read our favourite novels on Kindles and iPad. We cook tasty cake and post it on our Facebook. We edit on wikis so that other people can access some unknown knowledge you may be familiar with. We may point out a common example of  the application of social media. When I traveled in Canada, I was keenly looking for a place to eat Chinese food, so I opened Yelp, which is an application in my smart phone of looking for a restaurant nearby, and yelped it. Then I found a bundle of restaurants listed by distances to my location. It also had comments and consuming-level on each restaurants. After I had my Chinese food, I also could add comments on the restaurants. Thus it is secure to say that we can not live without social media. According to Sabah Karimi, social networks contribute to our "Me-Centered" culture. It can be seen in every small part of our life. Social media are "becoming more user-driven and less static". On the same time, however, some people point out that the changes on lifestyle of social media is exaggerated too much because they think that there are still people in the world who totally do not get in touch with anyone else. For example, conservatives may consider their lives in a way that keeps static with before when social media had not so much influence. Can we say that social media have an effect on their life? Yes, we can. Even conservatives are got enrolled in today's globalization, because they can never be isolated with other people and the whole world. In the pace of globalization, everyone take part in the social network and social media will no doubt play a critical role in it. This is one reason that social media has dramatically changed many ways we live today. 
 

Secondly, the ways of connecting to other people have shifted drastically. The first point is that social media has increased the virtual connection between people, whereas has decreased the actual interaction such as talking face-to-face. We can see this point clearly from the studies of the Pew Internet and Canada Life Project. "73% of wired Canada now use social networking websites... Just over half of online teens (55%) used social networking sites in November 2006 and 65% did so in February 2008." (2010) In "Confessions of an instant messenger", Conor Boyland points that college students use Facebook or twitter too much, which is the bad effect of social media and will damage social skill. He calls it as "Internet addiction", which makes people have no time for talking and reading. (2005) The other point is that we have come to an era that we ourselves are not only receivers of the information, but also producers. The direction of transmitting messages has shifted from one-way to double directions. For example, we can shoot a video and post it on youtube. It is nothing new. However, some people may not comply with the idea that they are producers of information nowadays because they do not participate in the producing process. This is not true because not producing information do not implies we are free from the role of producers. Everyday, when we talk to somebody else, or convey someone a useful message, we act as a mediator, which can be also treated as a producer. This is another reason that social media has dramatically changed many ways we live today.
 

Last but not the least important, social media has made the information more easily for us to approach and we tend to be influenced in many ways. For example, the explosion emergence of social media has made the information ubiquitous and we can get to know an unfamiliar word or event by just typing it in the box and googling it. The producers of the messages may also use different kinds of rhetorical strategies to persuade people. They can use pathos to get audiences' emotion so that audiences can think just as the producers do. On the other hand, someone may pose that we still have the sense of media literacy so that we can not be easily persuaded. However, we must acknowledge the fact that it is only a small part of us that have adequate identification ability. Our humanity causes us to be persuaded because we intent not to think too much and after a series of fancy description of the "products" the producers want to sell, our heart may be deeply caught and forget to consider whether it is necessary to get the product. For example, Dealmoon is a website that offers deals of luxury products everyday. People may find it very useful because it can save a lot of money on their future purchases. However, an interesting phenomenon is that people spend more money on their daily lives after the website is available. Because people are always persuaded to buy products even they do not actually need them at all. Consumers may think that if I missed this deal, I would never get such a good stuff next time. Therefore, they open their wallet easily. That is why marketing is so important. Thus it is also an evident aspect of social media has changed the world we live in a lot.
 

From what has been discussed above, we may safely come to the conclusion that social media has a strong effect on changing our daily life. Our lifestyle has become so different than before. We connect with other people in other manners which can not be imagined before such as online-chatting or editing wikis. Once exposed to the social media, most of us will easily be persuaded.

 

Reference文献
 

Envision in Depth, Reading, Writing, and Researching Arguments(Second Edition), 2011, Christine L.Alfano, Alyssa J.O'Brien

Social Media and Young Adults, 2010, the Pew Internet and Canada Life Project

Confessions of an instant messenger, 2005, Conor Boyland

How Online Networks Contribute to Our "Me-Centered" Culture, 2006, Sabah Karimi