By Shealyn Miles
Special Features Editor

The average person has what, 800 friends, Facebook friends that is. This issue with society today is that people tend to focus more on their virtual status rather than their real one.

One may argue that social media has brought the world endless connections that seemed nonexistent in previous years. This is undoubtedly true. Social networking sites allow the word to spread at a much faster pace than people have ever thought possible.

The question is, however, is society really connecting? If so, who is it that people are reaching out to? Are they even important? Out of Facebook’s 500 million users, the average person toils over it 7 hundred minutes per month. Of course, there is some merit in the content they scroll through, but for the average teenager, is it much more than obsessing over the lives of their so-called “friends?”

People today are immensely skilled at sending out information across the web in seconds, but many can barely take part in a conversation with family or close friends. Take this classic scenario, a friend is on their phone, and it takes them nearly five minutes to respond to a question that was asked, and even when they do, their mind lingers on what they had been reading on their phone.

According to author Jonathan Safran Foer in the New York Times, “Technology celebrates connectedness, but encourages retreat.”

If these websites risk ruining relationships, are they worth the five seconds of fame when one gets a notification that some random person liked their photo?

The suggestion is not to throw away social media altogether. There are obvious advantages to sending out mass information. The suggestion is to put the phone down for a family dinner. After all, the things one can learn in a face-to-face conversation might interest them.