In “Text or Talk: Is technology making you lonely?” written by Margie Warrell and “Does technology make us more alone?” written by Michael Gonchar, both authors argues that social media has gotten in the way of our real life social networks.

Both articles prove their arguments in different ways. Warrell’s article provides statistics to support her argument. Some of which include that young people under 35 and are the most prolific social networkers report feeling most alone. Additionally, they note in a recent study 48% of people only had one confidant while in a similar study 25 years ago most people felt they had about three confidants. Later on in the article, they also share tips as to how to help build and stabilize more real life connections in your social network that include becoming a better listener and engaging with your community amongst other strategies. Gonchar’s article takes a personal approach noting many different comments from an article they wrote a few years prior asking questions regarding how social media is affecting people’s real life connections. They included many different students’ comments that both agreed and disagreed with the way social media affects our in person relationships. All in all, it gave a very personal insight as to what the main users of social media, students, are thinking about their overall usage of different social medias and how it affects their relationships with their family and friends.

I appreciate the different approach the articles took. As a student myself who feels like they thrive socially with or without social media, it was interesting to see the different perspectives some students had. Personally, I understand that social media can work to hinder some in-person skills. However, I have never been in a position where I felt that social media had that much power over my in-person social abilities, so even though I understand that this can happen I’ve never been able to understand exactly what that feels like. Nor do I know of any of my peers who feel the same way, but these articles prove that even those who are drowning in social media usage can not even notice just how much of it they are using and how much it’s affecting them.