PB3A

I was initially going to do a paper about how twitter is destroying children, but I was captivated by another paper I found while doing my research. The paper is titled, “The effect of Twitter on college student engagement and grades”.The essay discusses an experiment that is conducted in order to analyze the effect of twitter in the classroom. The paper concludes that twitter can be beneficial in the college setting, because of how it is used to engage students on the topics discussed in class. The article conducts an experiment within a college classroom setting that tests how twitter interaction helps with interaction on the topics being discussed. The ultimate conclusion is that twitter can be beneficial it just has to be monitored, and it also depends on the students. Twitter therefore allows the students to think about the subject matter for a longer amount of time, and with the use of different platforms.

I am conflicted about what genre I should do for the younger audience. I either want to write a picture book sort of horror story where twitter is originally this spooky character, because no one was willing to make friends with him. After the kids find out that the spooky character is actually a cute puppy that was covered in mud. The moral of the story would be something super corny like, “You can find friends where you least expect them”, or “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. I would use simple language to write it and keep the tone light. There would be a happy ending of course! Also, I’ve noticed that children’s books don’t have that many characters because children get confused with complex storylines, so I’ll keep the story straight-forward. The age group I’ll probably write for is the five to six year range when kids are learning how to read.

I am also interested in the whole tween magazine universe. I collected stacks of magazines after our school did a fundraiser that involved selling magazine subscriptions. One of my favorite magazines was Tiger Beat. The cover was filled with Disney Stars ranging from Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers, and Zac Efron. Each issue promised that it would contain the latest scoop, so I would advertise the same thing in my article. I would use slang and make sure that I call out “grown ups” for being “totally lame” for trying to be cool by using twitter to appeal to a younger audience. The point of this article will most likely be to warn tweens that adults are trying to infiltrate the sacred grounds that they use to share their stream of consciousness to the world, and advise them to start using a new platform. I will include fake quotes about what popular teen celebrities think about adults joining twitter to reinforce my argument. After all, how can a tween argue with Tiger Beat when celebrities like (insert teen celebrity I will find) agree with the fact that twitter is meant for people under 25 only.

I will transform the twitter issue into a parenting article in a magazine. “How to Tweet Like Your Kid”. I will use outdated terms and vague assumptions that other parents often make when referring to children. I will have a formal tone, but when it comes to the example tweets I will try to imitate an adult that is trying to sound younger than they really are. I will include examples of how to format a tweet, and how to make a tweet effective even with the 140 character limitation. I have noticed that a lot of parenting “how to” guides are geared towards an audience of adults that seek out to feel more connected to the children. So I will promise within the article that using twitter correctly is guaranteed to fortify the connection between parent and child.