Why Social Media Destroying Our Social Skills: Article Analysis

The author of the article posted in USA Today “Why Social Media is Destroying Our Social Skills,” mentions that teenagers and college going students prefer Facebook, Tweeter, and texting as the preferred forms of communication. The author, Jasmine Fowlkes, is a 2010 mass communications graduate of the University of South Florida and currently working in New York City as a USA Today research analyst. According to Fowlkes, social media interaction now dominates both the online and offline communications, and since it has become a norm for a society for interacting and over-sharing online, people are more likely to speak to a friend and family through electronic devices than face-to-face. The negative results of using social medias to our social

She says that lack of inter-communications will deteriorate the ability of effective communication among youths. The author supports her main points with the backing of different research and stats making her reasoning stronger. She brings the viewpoint of various writers and scholars such as Yazino founder Hussein Chahine, University of South Florida graduate Mark Clennon, Ed Keller and Brad Fay, all of them supporting her thesis. She comes up with the quote by Mark Clennon which says, “There’s a greater desire to share with other people you barely know than hanging out with friends and making memories,” She also uses numerical data to make her argument more practical and meaningful. According to Chahine, “Communication is constantly evolving. Some people are as used to seeing their friends’ online avatar as they are their face.” One of the studies reveals the fact that 11 percent of the adults love to stay at home during the weekends and communicate with their friends in social media rather than going out and enjoying with them. The author’s approach to supporting her thesis seems to be less descriptive with less source and

She has used some primary sources like studies and surveys to support and illustrate her points. Some of the sources she came up are from the viewpoints of authors and scholars like Yazino, Mark Clennon, Ed Keller and Brad Fay. She mentions about the ongoing research about Talk Track research and also the article from The Telegraph. While some of her evidence can be more supportive of her thesis, she also uses some sources to point out the importance of face-face conversation and how social media can never replace them. Then she proves that social media could be misleading. She takes the support of Talk Track research used in Ed Keller and Brad Fay’s “The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace?”. According to the research conversations in person are much stronger than those online. Keller and Fay also quote, ‘’The decision we make are based on actual interpersonal influence: social influence, which happens most powerfully, face-to-face.” Their research at the same time also suggests that 90 percent of the meaningful conversations that we have every day happens offline, while only 8% are