Now that the 20% project is coming to a close, and presentations are nearing I have began to reflect back on this project and what I have learned through researching and analyzing my topic. The main question that I focused on for the project was, "does social media actually make college students more social or unsocial?". Although many people believe that college students are being social by communicating with others via social media, we are actually inverting ourselves into a digital life and hiding behind a keyboard. Through researching I discovered that 94% of first year college students use social media sites, and 38% of students say they cannot go more than 10 minutes without checking their laptop, smartphone, or e-reader. This addiction/attachment that college students are forming between themselves and social media is taking away from their ability to communicate to peers in person, because they are so focused and caught up in a social media realm.
To collect all of my ideas/findings and put them into a presentable form, I used the website Glogster to create an online poster. Glogster is a great tool which allowed me to combine text, music, videos, and pictures to create a poster online that easy to comprehend and navigate. Glogster also allows for the use of color and design that grabs people's attention, so that they are eager to focus on the message that your poster conveys.
While gathering all of the ideas and facts for my 20% project, I found it difficult to differentiate between fact and opinion online. Although everyone's opinion holds value, I was solely looking for facts while researching so that I could form my opinion to center the project around. After my project was presented, many students believed that in some ways social media can distract college students and in a way make them unsocial. Rather than conversing with the people around us, we sometimes tend to focus on our phone or laptop which makes us unable to fully live in the moment and take advantage of all experiences and interactions.

Final Presentation on Glogster:
http://shelbywarren29.edu.glogster.com/edit-2000-20-project/

Through researching this question I have become more aware of the negative effects of social media on my generation and generations to come. Many people think that social media connects people, which in some ways it in fact does, but it also disconnects us from reality. Although I have learned a lot about social media's impacts on society, there is still a lot more research to be done. I would like to find out  how it will effect future generations, with the increased usage and advances in technology/social media.  With the increased development of social media, and rapid expansion of the technology realm, I can only imagine it worsening from here on out. In class we incorporate many forms of social media into our agenda, so I would also like to see if the use of social media benefits our class and learning environment as a whole.
I think that if people read my blog and actually thought more about the effects of social media on college students, they would realize that it is not necessary to always rely on social media. Since my 20% topic pertains to the use of social media by college students, my target audience for this blog is obviously college students.
To communicate my findings to the class and others, I have decided to create an online poster. I think that an online poster will effectively communicate my ideas in an organized and easy to understand manner. Especially since all my facts and thoughts will all be on one page, and easy to read as well!