Running head: THE CAUSE OF NARCISSISM

The Cause of Narcissism

Sara Lespron
University of Texas at El Paso

THE CAUSE OF NARCISSISM

Social media was developed to help people communicate, create or share information,
and to network. In this generation, social media has taken its toll on our society. Websites such
as Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter have become a gateway for teens to become self absorbed.
With endless selfies and thousands of followers, teens forget what is really important in their
lives and focus more on how they look and what others think of them. Jay Thadeshwar, Founder
and Digital Strategist at Poised, and author of this article discusses how social media has
influenced the rise of narcissism.
Jay Thadeshwar has a reasonable amount of ethos. He is a young blogger and
entrepreneur who developed a website, TechTheBest.com, that is devoted to information about
technology, social media, web, start-ups and entrepreneurship. Since he is quite young and uses
social media on a day to day basis, he is able to have a better understanding of how social media
is affecting our society. It is easier for him to relate to what our generation is going through even
though he does not use social media in the same ways as the majority of people in our society.
Thadeshwar uses logos in a couple of ways. He defines and discusses the term
merformers, which is used to label individuals who constantly post absurd photos, videos, etc.
about their personal lives. They go overboard with what they put out on social media with
frequent updates and too much information. The term meformer was actually coined by
researchers at Rutgers University who used it to label social media users who post updates about
their everyday actions, feelings, emotions, and thoughts. Their study estimated that 80% of

THE CAUSE OF NARCISSISM

Twitter users are meformers. He believes that this is because individuals are self-absorbed, but
there are also other theories a to why they are like that. He also uses statistics to show evidence
for his research. For instance, a Harvard study revealed that self-disclosure actually feels good,
which probably explains why approximately 30-40% of what we say is dedicated to letting
others know what and how were feeling. Basically he is saying that social media allows
individuals to feel better about themselves by giving them the freedom and ability to post
countless selfies to gain the admiration from friends and followers.
The author does not use a lot of pathos. There is only one picture throughout the article
that presents a woman with a cell phone taking a selfie. Thadeshwar uses this picture to
display to the audience what selfies are like. He then goes on to talk about how selfies are all
over the social media and how they come in a wide range of forms such as pretty selfies and
funny selfies. The most common version I have encountered is of the bathroom mirror variety,
often exhibiting lip expressions resembling that of the Anatidae (an appearance called the Duck
Face). Selfies thrive on public attention and adore being adored.
The audience that the author is trying to target is anybody who has any type of experience
with social media. The author made the article very easy to understand and uses a casual tone.
He also expresses his own thoughts and experiences with social media which helps the readers
relate to him. When I visit these social networks, I cant help feeling like a tourist exposed to a
culture that is both foreign yet fascinating.

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Thadeshwar proves that our society is becoming very self-absorbed by using his own
experiences to demonstrate why he believes that social media causes narcissism, and by
presenting statistical data conducted by various universities. The author states that social
networks have highlighted, rather than enhanced, our self-obsessive tendencies. This means that
social media is just a gateway to the characteristic of narcissism. The author is an effective writer
overall, but should focus more on the appeals to pathos since the article is all about the use of
social media.

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5
Reference

Jay Thadeshwar, (2014, September 11), Social media and narcissism: rise of a self-obsessed
society, Retrieved from
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140911175326-66132034-social-media-and-narcissis
m-rise-of-a-self-obsessed-society