Whether smartphones have caused more harm than good to our society.

Hi! I'm practicing for the Toefl writing task 2. Please help me review my essay. Thank you!

Topic :
DO YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT?
Smartphones have caused more harm than good to our society.

Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

My essay:

With the developement of modern technology in this day and age, smartphones has become increasingly popular in society. However, whether this equipment has a positive or negative influence on our life remains controversial. In my opinon, its drawbacks far outweights its advantages. I feel this way for two reasons, which I will explore in the following paragraphs.

Firstly, smartphones pose a threat to human's health. Spending too much time on this gadget can adversly affect our eyes in the long run. Take my younger brother as an example, instead of hanging out with friends or participating in outdoor activities, he spent most of his spare time texting, playing games or surfing the net on his smartphone. It appeared that he was addicted to the phone. As a result, after a long time, he suffered from several serious vision issues, such as dry eyes or short-sightedness. He regretted having used smartphone in an uncontrolled way. That is the reason why this tool is harmful and we should be careful when using it.

Second, smartphones also reduce communication and interaction among people. Nowadays, teenagers have a tendency to stick to their phone screen even when their friends are around. Due to the presence of smartphones, youngsters are less likely to have face to face conversation with people around them. For instance, one time I had a meeting with my old classmates from highschool. We gathered in a coffee, however, instead of talking, exchanging information, sharing stories or recalling memories together, everybody seemed to be distracted by their phones. We did not pay attention to the subject of the talk and wasted our times dealing with personal things on the phones. Hence, there seemed to be an unvisual barrier between us.

In conclusion, I believe that smartphones adversely impact our society, for they not only cause damage to our health, but also reduce interactive activities among people.

Hi, your essay really suprised me. However, there are some spelling errors that you have to be more careful
1. With the development
2.this gadget can adversely
3. Highschool-> high school
You did well!

@baotram1812
Thanks a lot!

I think your essay is organized logically, but in my own experience, I would suggest that you should not use your own experience as an example in order to make your essay sounds more academic, you should use broader examples which exist in our society.

There is a commonality between the TOEFL and IELTS tests. That commonality is the way that the examiners score the essay better when the student uses personal information in the essay. This does not remove the academic requirement of the presentation as the essay writing instruction clearly states that specific reasons and examples must be used in support of the writer's opinion. As such, the use of the brother, in a story telling style, meets this primary evidence requirement.

However, the writer tends to use memorized phrases which will not help in the scoring of the overall essay. The phrases " in this day and age" and "hanging out" are not only memorized, but these are also informal or casual English phrase references. These types of words are what tend to remove the academic tone of a response essay.

Additionally, the writer needs to ensure that he directly responds to the prompt and does not use various confusing discussion terms that could refer to other essay discussion types. In this case, the response should clearly state an agreement or disagreement. It must not use other essay descriptors such as positive or negative and drawbacks / advantages.

The conclusion is a run on sentence and must be replaced with a proper simple and complex sentence presentation in the paragraph. The presentation should be based on the summarizing of the previous topic and its discussion points.

@Holt
Thanks for your help. I'll try harder next time!