After reading the article, The Quagmire of Social Media, I have taken into account Silver's thoughts on social media "friendships" and how obtainable and practical these friendships are to real life. I feel that Silver's argument is strong but also very one-sided. He takes into account Dunbar's number, which is a theory that states it is only possible for us to maintain 150 relationships at one given time. But I feel that using this evidence hurts his argument. This evidence was meant for face-to-face relationships and not social media friendships. These types of relationships are very different in terms of closeness. The counter argument that Silver's critique is that online technologies are used to create more meaningful connections rather than a collection of lost friendships is also an argument that does not use dialectical thinking. After reading this article, I understand both sides of the argument and below are my thoughts and reaction.
I do not believe that it is valid to think of virtual connection that is built online to supplement an actual face-to-face connection. My reasoning behind this is because face-to-face allows you to have spontaneity and when this happens, you are sharing things with each other from the moments you've shared. Real life moments. These moments turn to memories and with each moment your friendship is able to become stronger. There is a stronger bond that you have with someone when you are face-to-face friends. You share more information between each other and have unfiltered and unedited moments with this connection. Although, I am able to see this other side of online relationships, and how they might be just as strong as a face-to-face relationship. Many are able to share a lot about themselves online because they don't feel as vulnerable with the screen acting as a barrier. But I still believe that these online relationships cannot supplement a physical relationship.
Silver's perspective of the inferiority of online relationships compared to face-to-face contact impacts the effectiveness of his argument by hurting and helping his argument. I think its helpful he has such a strong stance on his opinions on online relationships and face-to-face relationships. But I believe that if he had offered more dialectical thinking throughout his article his argument would have been stronger because he would have offered his thoughts while also including the counterarguments of the positives of online relationships. If he added more information that counteracted his viewpoint it would have been less one sided and his argument would have been more complete and in favor of his initial opinion.
A social media platform that counteracts Silver's point would be Facebook. I believe that Facebook has turned into an online portal for people to overshare their personal information. That being said, this is one of the few online portals where you would be able to have that next best thing to an actual face-to-face relationship. Facebook relationships make you feel like you are close with others because of the detailed posts that yourself and others are posting. You feel like you are much more connected to that person because you know so much about them. Their general information is available and people typically post many detailed excerpts about their day that almost makes you feel like you are talking to them face-to-face. The ability to comment and continue the conversation publicly or privately allows this feeling of an actual relationship to prevail. 
A social media platform that demonstrates Silver's point of view would be Instagram. Instagram only allows you to see people's lives through photos, most of which are crafted, staged, and edited. These photos are images that the user puts time into sharing, they are not candid moments of the persons life so although you can get a glimpse of the activities they are involved in you are not actually able to see their honest lifestyles. If all you see are posed photos of their lives you aren't really getting a glimpse of who they actually are. Therefore you wouldn't really consider them to be a close friend. Although there is the ability to comment and like on these photos, the conversations had are not meaningful enough to supplement a real life friendship.
