Genre Translation

Social Media impacts Mental Health

The peer-reviewed article I chose was about the experience of social media from young

people and how it affects our mental health. The key words I used were “social media” and

“mental health”. Some patterns I found were that there are lots of articles related to the role of

social media on mental health and how people’s mental health was impacted. I chose this article

because social media nowadays is an essential part of people’s lives. We get involved with social

media every day. However, the use of social media does not only bring people happiness but also

causes a lot of issues. For example, increased suicide rates, depression, and self-harm but these

issues are often neglected by many people. However, they are very important issues existing

around us, and we need to raise more awareness. This is the reason I chose to do a poster as they

get the message across easily and it doesn’t take time for a reader to comprehend the

information.

The authors are Alanna McCrory, Paul Best, and Alan Maddock who study social

sciences, education, and social work. The intended audience of the article are scholars that

specialize in Psychology, Biology and Communication areas. The article was published by the

Health Education Research. The article examines the negative effects social media can have as it

examines its large influence on the younger generation. It questions what motivates or attracts

people to spend countless hours scrolling across various social media platforms. The main

argument is that social media has caused people to desire getting likes and comments on social

media to feel accepted. This is unhealthy for mental health, and has caused many to feel obsessed

and addicted to social media. The rhetorical purpose of this article is to believe social media has

negative impacts on teenagers’ mental health and inform the audience to be aware of how their
uses of social media can impact them. Some rhetorical strategies used in this article are that they

gave samples and conversations of different groups of people as their evidence to convince the

audience how the everyday common usage of social media would unconsciously impact mental

health. The research was also classified and divided into several sub-themes to help the audience

better understand from what perspectives the research was being made and clearly conveys the

messages and make the overall article more persuasive.

The genre I choose is poster. Poster could appear on newspapers, magazines, in stores,

etc. In this case, the poster would appear on a page of the magazine. The purpose of the poster is

to convey the message of warning the public about their individual mental health regarding the

use of high visual social media. Posters usually contain vivid images, which make them fun and

entertaining for the audience. They also have big, bold headings which make the central

information very candid and effective. I chose to translate the most important thesis from the

academic article into a big image that is in the middle of the ad, which says “social media affects

mental health, especially teenagers (McCrory)”. The picture portrays a person holding his head

and surrounded by several social media icons, which indicates that he is miserable from the

stress of using social media and the struggle with mental health. When thinking from the writer’s

perspective, the information they want to convey is “social media creates an ideal comfort zone

for people, but they will be overindulged with the intangible happiness they gain to the extent

that they cannot accept the real identity of themselves. Social media lowers people’s self-esteem

and creates mental health issues.” On the side of the picture, I put subheadings in smaller font

and in another color different than the heading. There is also a contrast between the font sizes to

grab the audience’s attention better and would be more alike to a poster in magazine. I translated
one of the findings from the study that “uses of filters, comments, and likes all contribute to

mental health problems (McCrory)” into a bright color with only the words of “filters,

comments, and likes” with corresponding emojis that represent the content, makes the poster

more interesting to read. From considering how the audience will process the information in a

printed media, first thing that gets the attention would be the visual image, then the big heading,

and eventually to the section with smaller font of the words. After the translation, the intended

audience would be applying to a wider range of people, such as parents of teenagers and

millennials who read magazines often and also use social media a lot. This reaches the purpose

of spreading the awareness that social media can easily impact teenager’s mental health.

Although this cannot include every single detail in the article, it corresponds with the studies in

the article. People obsessed with photographic filters, comments and likes are more likely to be

exposed to vulnerable self-esteem because they usually will be deceived and indulged with those

ideal identities appeared on social media. This leads to people being unable to accept who they

really. This will lead to mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.

In Lisa Bickmore’s Genre in the Wild, she mentioned “genre is an act of language”

(Bickmore). The function of genre plays important role in our daily lives as we use them to

communicate and interpret ideas from other people. Sometimes a very concise and

straightforward form of genre is more effective at communication ideas than an academic article.

Just like when the audience view the genre of a printed media, it is short but contains visuals and

the essential information in a short text form. When communicating the idea, this genre acts as a

language system to make the communication entertaining for the audience while cuts straight to

the point and reaches an efficient communication. I used the genre of poster as a way of
communication because it gives the most important information in a concise conversation.

Another rhetorical strategy I used is from Peter Elbow’s article. He stated that we all have first

and second order of thinking, and we should think back and forth to help us think both intuitively

and logically (Elbow). I also used this method when writing my essay. My intuitive thought was

to use a genre that can be both entertaining and also effective when conveying the message,

some thoughts came into my mind are posters, magazines, newspaper and ads. My second order

thoughts helped me finalize the genre that I decided to use and how I could connect the

information from the article using a concise way but also effective to make the readers

understand the message. Using both first and second order gives me the insights to form the

creativity when translating my genre.

In conclusion, the goal for this essay is to demonstrate a translation from an article about

how social media affects people’s mental health and can cause a big issue for teenagers. I used

evidence from the study and translated them into a form of a poster to inform the negative effects

of social media to the audience and convey to people to beware of their mental health.
Works Cited

Bickmore, Lisa. “Genre in the Wild: Understanding Genre within Rhetorical (Eco)Systems.”

Open English SLCC, Open English @ SLCC, 1 Aug. 2016,

https://pressbooks.pub/openenglishatslcc/chapter/genre-in-the-wild-understanding-genre-

within-rhetorical-ecosystems/.

Elbow, Peter. “Teaching Thinking by Teaching Writing.” Change, vol. 15, no. 6, 1983, pp. 37–

40. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40164191. 5 Feb. 2023.

Johnson, Hannah. “Social Media and Mental Health: Pros, Cons, and Solutions.” The Acronym

IMSAs Official Student Newspaper, 17 Dec. 2021,

https://sites.imsa.edu/acronym/2021/12/17/social-media-and-mental-health-pros-cons-and-

solutions/.

McCrory, Alanna, et al. “'It's Just One Big Vicious Circle': Young People's Experiences of

Highly Visual Social Media and Their Mental Health.” OUP Academic, Oxford University

Press, 11 May 2022, https://academic.oup.com/her/article/37/3/167/6583538?login=true.