This is a difficult topic for me to pick sides with, because I think that in a way people are isolating themselves, but in another way they are not. Meeting up with a group of friends gives you the potential speak one-on-one, makes you able to connect with the conversation you are having in greater depth, and you are also able to use non-verbal cues to understand how your speaker is feeling. When you are having a conversation through text messages, you could be in a room by yourself, but you are able to connect with many people at once through the text messages. The down side to this would be the lack of engagement in the conversation, the conversation could be very casual and not have much meaning to it, or you may not realize that the person on the other end may not understand what you are talking about.
Facebook has become increasingly popular in the past couple years and it is said that it makes such great connections with old school friends, neighborhood friends, and just people you haven’t talked to in a long time. Well, yes you may add them to be your friend, exchange a few wall posts after that, and then what? In my opinion, that is not connecting, but it obviously isn’t isolating either.
I do not think that isolating vs. connecting is something that needs to be of big concern right now, because people will continue to isolate themselves if that is what they do now. Also, others will continue to meet up with friends and converse over dinner and not isolate themselves. For the future, it could become a problem, because people may get too reliant on phones and the internet and could begin to lack in social skills. Even the increase in online classes plays a part into this debate, because, yes, technically one student may be talking to another through a discussion board post, but is the quality of the comment the same as it would be in an in-class discussion?
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