Emily Schwab, Ryan Duncan, Jelo Blanco

 

Article: Against Headphones

The article, “Against Headphones” by Virginia Heffernan is a ceremonial argument. Heffernan is the main arguer and is making the claim of, “Maybe the danger of digital culture to young people is not that they have hummingbird attention spans but that they are going death” (Heffernan, 1). The purpose of this argument is to target the audience of teenagers and parents to explain the dangers of headphone usage. The author is persuading parents to limit their kids of headphone technology. Based on the author’s usage of Ethos, pathos, and logos, all three of us agree that the author’s purpose has been achieved. An example of logos used is, “The number of teenagers with hearing loss – from slight to severe – has jumped 33 percent since 1994” (Heffernan, 1). Although this article was written almost a decade ago, it still manages to be effective today because many students use headphones for their virtual learning purposes. This ties into the idea of kairos.