For this blog post I will refer back to an article I previously wrote about: “Stop Googling. Let’s Talk” by Sherry Turkle. I will be analyzing her introduction to her opinion piece printed in the New York Times and seeing which strategies I can then integrate into my own writing.

First, Turkle begins with setting a scene to familiarize the reader with the argument she is presenting. The first words are “COLLEGE students”, followed by an accurate description of how college students act with technology and split attention: focusing on a friend in person while texting at the same time. Whether or not the reader participates in conversation this way, this is a common sight to see in twenty-first century America. The next sentence is an explanation of background information, with a hinted mocking tone of ignorant youth as she talks about how they explain they get away with partial attention due to hiding texting in middle school classes. Finally, Turkle ends the paragraph with how college students are able to be with their friends and “elsewhere”. The follow-up paragraph includes data on how often adults use phones at social events and also how most feel it takes away from the event.

Overall, this introduction is engaging yet bland. There is enough detail to grab the reader’s attention through a small anecdote and mocking tone. Oh, those silly kids and their phones. It has enough weight to make a reader pay attention to the next, more important paragraph about studies on phones and attention. The anecdote is also focused in topic, not being randomly assigned to grab attention and instead focusing as a transition from the real world to the argument in the article. However, the anecdote itself is too general to hold for more than the three sentences that compose it. I want to use the focus that Turkle uses, but at the same time be engaging enough, since my introduction will be considerably longer.