Excerpt – An entertainment-driven culture runs the risk of encouraging passivity among its citizens. If they can experience something vicariously through a movie, television show, or video game, why would they get involved with the activity itself? It’s safer, after all, to watch someone scale a mountain than to do it yourself. The effect of the passivity, of course, is an apathetic frame of mind. We cease to care deeply about some any things because they are experiences, at best, second-hand.
Assignment: is apathy a problem in today’s society? Write an essay in which you answer this question and discuss your point of view on the issue. Support your position logically with examples from literature, the arts, history, politics, science and technology, current events, or your experience or observation.
Why should I go outside to skateboard if I can do it on my TV? Or why should I play real basketball? I am way better on my Xbox, plus playing Xbox is way easier. I think that a quickly growing percentage of today's youth think like this. And this in turn has led to a quickly growing obesity rate. So yes, I very strongly believe that passivity is a problem in today's society.
Up until the 20th century people didn't have anything like a TV, computer, or Nintendo. And they also were a much better-prepared-for-life, fitter world. Now all kids want to do is sit inside, and that is ruining the lives of our kids. One of my best friends has an older brother and a younger brother that I don't ever see outside. Both of them constantly watch TV or play video games. The older one did not finish high school, got his first job at 19 years old, and at 20 years old still lives at home. His life is already way behind where it should be, I at barely age 17 have had more life experiences and am better prepared for the real world than he is.
In my eyes the worst effect of this passiveness is the world's obesity problem. As people sit inside and watch TV they continually rain weight. In many cases so much weight that they have trouble leaving, going to work, and doing almost anything for themselves. Then the government steps in, but in a way not even close to helpful. The government puts these people on welfare. Paying them to sit at home because they have already done such a good job of sitting on their couches eating. And as our nation goes deeper into debt every second welfare becomes a bigger and bigger contributor to this problem.
Passivity is a huge problem in our society, and it is ever-growing. Due to the huge lake of people feeling the need to go outside we have young people that have already at least massively slowed down, if not destroyed their lives. We need to find a way to draw people away from the tube and the Xbox, and find alternatives. Alternatives that will help them gain valuable life experiences, and alternatives that will stop the world from becoming too fat to handle itself.
5 answers
Introduction includes some slang/diction problems.
Other paragraphs include further slang/diction problems, strange reference to time (in 2nd paragraph), at least one sentence fragment, some punctuation problems, some spelling problems.
Is apathy the same as passivity?
Paragraph 2: "Up until the 20th century. . ." Then you only write about the time from about 1988 onward.
Read your essay very carefully to find the sentence fragment.
Run your paper through a spell check to find spelling problems.
http://www.spellcheck.net/
Using "way" as an adverb is slang.
Get rid of the hyphens (or learn to use them correcctly).
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/hyphen.htm
Numbers that can be written in one or two words need to be spelled out unless you're using them for a statistics or other numbers-only purpose.
Starting sentences with any of the coordinating conjunctions is not a good idea. (FANBOYS!)
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/conjunctions.htm#top
Get command of the comma rules:
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/commas.htm
This is a run-on, and it includes problems with word choice, including slang, and is an unexplained generalization; in what ways (specifics needed) are you better prepared...?
"His life is already way behind where it should be, I at barely age 17 have had more life experiences and am better prepared for the real world than he is."
Are "apathy" and "passivity" interchangeable? Do they mean the same thing? If so, you need to state that and explain it. The word "apathy" is used in the question, but not in your paper. You use "passivity" with no explanation.
Can you locate other generalizations you've made and correct or explain them?
This isn't a list of everything, but it's a start.
3 answers