It is becoming more and more difficult to escape the influence of the media on our lives. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of living in a media rich society.

Essay topic: 

It is becoming more and more difficult to escape the influence of the media on our lives. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of living in a media rich society.

While traditional media outlets such as televisions and newspapers still dominate our lives, social media in the likes of Facebook and Twitter are gaining in popularity. Though the ensuing boost in information has vastly improved our living standards, they may prove disastrous at times.

On one hand, we are better informed of both local and international situations as we are blessed with a wider choice of accessing information. This includes novel methods such as the internet. Blogs and other social websites, for example, Facebook, further empow us to generate our own news. Despite the threat of being drown by this larger pool of data, advances in search engine tools and subscriptions to specific sources enable us to efficiently and effectively sift through this mass of information.

Additional and prompt access to information, in turn, has positively impacted both our personal lives and our work. For instance, up-to-date movements in stock prices allow businessmen to strike the best investment deals while Twitting about an impending tsunami can save lives by spurring people to adopt in-time precautionary measures.

However, the various shifts in the media industry have brought a series of ills in their wake. Established media companies are complaining about the informal nature of the news generated by social media. These are often authored by people with no formal journalistic qualification who fail to undertake a background check of their claims before publishing them. Also, as more of us take to social instead of traditional media for our daily dose of news, our general knowledge has taken a step backwards. Indeed, the former is often bursting with gossips and celebrity news instead of current events.

Furthermore, we are witnessing a worrying rising trend in the amount of people addicted to social media, with some psychologists even labeling this phenomenon as a new mental illness. Although we are more connected to the net, we are simultaneously distancing ourselves from physical contacts, which is impeding our communication skills.

To conclude, living in a media rich society entails far more benefits. Nevertheless, we should remain aware of the potential dangers from the overuse of some particular types of media which may negate the positive effects of this revolution.

Sentence: Blogs and other

Sentence: Blogs and other social websites, for example, Facebook, further empow us to generate our own news.
Error: empow Suggestion: No alternate word

Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 8.0 out of 9
Category: Excellent Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 364 350
No. of Characters: 1910 1500
No. of Different Words: 226 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.368 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.247 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.852 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 147 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 108 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 81 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 50 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.412 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.971 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.529 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.301 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.596 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.139 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5