Emily Nussbaum Say Everything Analysis

In the essay “Say Everything” written by Emily Nussbaum, the author presents the argument that young people in this generation do not have a sense of privacy and tend to post whatever they like on the internet. She presents 3 different ideas of what happens when young adults are on the internet.

In the introduction of the author’s essay, she starts off with interviews and examples of everyday people. The author, Emily, meets with one girl named Kitty and thought she “was warm and funny and humble” until the author went onto her MySpace account (Nussbaum 1). The author was thrown off and shocked because she did not expect Kitty to throw herself out there on the internet like that. From that point the author talks about famous people like Paris

Hilton to ordinary people she has interviewed with. In the author’s first argument, she argues that young people think of themselves as having an audience when they post on the internet. Emily interviews this girl named Xiyin, who has been posting diary entries since the fifth grade. When Xiyin started high school, her website became more popular and she started posting stuff that she “imagined people would want to read or comment on” (Nussbaum 2). In this section of the author’s argument, she only presents one fact and the rest is a personal experience through one person. As the reader it is difficult to tell if the rest of the young society is similar to this when it comes to posting because she only uses one person. If the author incorporated more examples of teens going online just to get attention, her argument may be stronger. If she also went further into detail about statistics about teenagers and more statistical evidence, her argument may be more convincing. If young people took this argument into consideration, the consequences could be that teenagers might not post as much anymore because what they post is out there forever. People, especially young adults wouldn’t be so insecure with themselves when they post something because if they don’t post anything, they wouldn’t have to worry about how many likes they obtain or what kind of comments they receive.
The second argument the author uses is that teens now have archived their adolescence.

She starts off her argument with her own personal experience then transitions into an example of a girl she interviewed named Caitlyn. She uses Caitlyn as an example to show that teenagers start posting their everyday lives from a young age. Caitlyn likes to post her blogs, her photos and documentaries about her school on the internet for the world to see. She has the characteristics from the author’s previous argument that she thinks she has an invisible audience on the internet and because of this she posts her daily routine. When Caitlyn took a trip to Manhattan, she posted her pictures and “memories of her time in New York [which] are [now] stored both in her memory, where they will decay, and on her site” (Nussbaum 3). During this argument, the author only uses examples of her personal interviews; she does not have any facts from credible resources. If the author where to include more personal examples of teenagers, it would not give the reader the suspicion on whether or not this is true for all youth. If teenagers thought about the consequences of posting online their daily lives, than many people would not do it. By taking this argument into consideration many people would be more careful about what they post. The online world can be a scary place because pedophiles can now have easy access to photos and teenagers accounts and pretend to be someone they are not. Young adults

wouldn’t have pictures of themselves from the fifth grade where everyone can see and possibly make fun of. Old video diaries would not be all over the internet for the world to see and possibly a future boss or cliental. The main effect this argument would have on a person is that they should be more cautious about what they post, how often they post, and where they post it. Teenagers would start posting less and not have this long webpage of themselves that goes back to middle school.
The last argument the author makes is that when people start posting on the internet they have to have thick skin; meaning they can’t let hate on their posts bother them.