COM 202 Persuasive Speech Outline PDF

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Persuasive speech outline on social media. Taken with Mary Healey....

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Halley Myers November 1, 2017 Then Dangers of Cell Phones, and the Importance of Living in the Present Moment

General purpose: To persuade Specific purpose: To persuade my audience to be on their phones less, providing examples of what they can do with their free-time instead and explaining the importance of mindfulness. I want my audience to be more conscious about the amount of time they spend on their phones. Thesis: With increased social media usage, cell phones have become less of a means to connect with friends and family and more of a distraction, taking us away from what is happening in the present moment and what truly matters. Introduction Attention getter: A. Attention Getter: By a show of hands, how many of you own smartphones? And by another show of hands, how many of you know the exact amount of time you spend on them per day… whether that be on social media, checking emails, texting, or even looking at Sakai? B. Reason to listen: As college students, we all (or at least most of us) own smartphones, and use them daily. Furthermore, as technology improves, so do our phones, in addition to the apps we use (and thus, the amount of time we spend on our devices increases). Because of how prevalent smartphones in modern-day society, I believe it’s an important subject to touch upon, and even more important to listen to. C. Credibility statement: a. What personally connects you to this topic? i. I had an initial understanding of biological/psychological processes from the classes I’ve taken for my major, but I wanted to connect it to something that is an integral part of my daily life—my iPhone. I’m also connected to this topic because I did a lot of research about it for the informative speech, and wanted to turn the negatives I found (dangers surrounding excessive phone usage) into positives (practicing mindfulness, focusing on the present moment). b. What type of research have you done to establish credibility? i. I’ve been conducting research using articles written by reputable authors explaining real studies that have been conducted by either them, their colleagues, or other researchers. I also found that the articles I’ve incorporated into my presentation include links to the original studies,

making it more credible. They also include information that correlates with other findings, not only building credibility, but accuracy. ii. I’m using direct quotes from a book I read by a respected Buddhist teacher, in addition to real studies I found online, to relate to the theme of mindfulness. D. Thesis: But aside from letting time escape while using these devices, there are many other dangers attributed to excessive smartphone use. My goal today is to discuss these dangers, and then switch focus to the importance of living in the present moment, in hopes that you leave today being a little more mindful, and on your phones a little less. Restate Thesis A. The “dangers” of excessive smartphone usage a. Statistic → Americans check their smartphones more than eight billion times per day; the average person checks 46 times per day (across all age groups); the average 18-24 year old checks 74 times per day (Source: Mindful.org) b. Statistic/research → put forth by MIT professor Sherry Turkle (Source: Mindful.org) c. Research/studies → i. Stanford neuroscientist Russ Poldrack; rewiring of the brain (Source: Sciencedaily.com) ii. Brain scans showing impairments and clear degradation in white matter (Source: TedTalk) 1. Relating to a quote by Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows” → “Your mind gets attracted just to what’s new rather than what’s important” iii. Other complications (Source: TedTalk) B. The importance of living in the present moment a. Quote by Thich Nhat Hanh, author of “You are Here” → On page 118, “Maybe we too are living like dead people. We move about life in our own corpse because we are not touching life in depth. We live a kind of artificial life, with lots of plans, lots of worries and anger. Never are we able to establish ourselves in the here and now and live our lives deeply. We have to wake up! We have to make it possible for the moment of awareness to manifest. This is the practice that will save us—this is the revolution.” b. Intro into mindfulness c. Class exercise → practicing mindfulness by focusing on the breath i. “Mindful breathing” C. List of activities you can do aside from using your smartphone Conclusion Ending paragraph/call to action

A. Though it’s difficult to measure the time we spend on our phones, and the impact it has on our biological, emotional, and social functioning, there is one thing we can know for certain—what we are doing in this very moment, and what we can do to make the most out of it. If there’s one thing you take away from this presentation, other than the fact that our smartphones takes us away from what’s in front of us, it’s that being truly here is important. So put that phone down, be aware of the time you spend on it, and recharge not its battery… but yourself! a. Ending paraphrased from a quote I found on google images, “Why recharge your phone battery when you can recharge yourself?”...