The Digital Parent Trap Summary

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In the article The Digital Parent Trap by Eliana Dockterman, she persuades her audience that there are benefits to early exposure to technology. However, anyone could state the benefits of a subject. Though Dockterman, uses writing skills to strengthen her argument and persuade her audience, that there are greater benefits of early exposure to technology versus consequences. She uses facts and examples to support claims, reasoning to connect claims and evidence, and stylistic or persuasive elements to strengthen her argument.

First of all, Dockterman claims that “this generation of American kids (ages 3 to 18) is the tech-savviest in history.” In order to backup her initial claim, she supports it with facts and examples to put things …show more content…

In order to support her claim, she states that “in a recent study by SRI, a nonprofit research firm, kids who played games like Samorost (solving puzzles) did 12% better on logic tests than those who did not.” This shows how Docterman uses evidence to support her claim, she is creating a pattern throughout her essay in which she states the benefits of early exposure to technology. She also says that “MIT’s Education Arcade, playing the empire-building game Civilization piqued students’ interest in history and was directly linked to an improvement in the quality of their history-class reports.” Like in the other study, Dockterman brings out the fact that it shows an improvement in interest / logic, in which benefits the entire class. In order to connect her initial claim with the evidence, she uses reasoning. She states the reason is “engagement. On average, according to research cited by MIT, students can remember only 10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear, and 50% of what they see demonstrated. But when they’re actually doing something themselves----in the virtual worlds on iPads or laptops----that retention rate skyrockets to 90%.” She explains how on average students only remember less than 50% of what they see, hear, or read. However, she states that the MIT study shows

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