Favorite Comments in Our Tech Tools Student Challenge I find that now I have most of my essential conversations digitally. I have 1,727 Facebook friends, but no one to talk to. Deep, complex layers of emotions were simplified into characters representable by an ASCII code. Despite our rants and "haha lol"s online, in real life we become more and more introverted. Earlier this year we asked students what tech tools played the biggest role in their lives, and 505 answered. In post after post, they told us about their Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Skype and text messaging habits, how those habits shape their daily lives and relationships, and whether the interactions feel more like therapy or addiction. We promised then that, along with the Technology desk at The Times, we would choose our favorite answers, and that those answers would possibly be featured elsewhere on NYTimes.com. Unfortunately, mostly because of difficulty obtaining legal permission to publish the last names of all the winners under 18, our collaborators weren't able to create the page they had envisioned. So, though we apologize for publishing this so long after the original contest, we would nonetheless like to congratulate Oceanna, Molly, Zineb, Jason, Vivian, Oyenuga, Mykaela and Jane, the eight students whose comments all judges agreed were our favorites. Read their full posts below. Oceanna G., 17, from Cumberland, Me., wrote that social media had taken on an outsize role in her life: As I opened up my laptop to write this paragraph, I also opened up a tab to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. I'll spend a quick 20 minutes going through each of the feeds, and then I'll attempt to write for at least 10 minutes. Each time I don't know what to write next, I'll see if I have any useful notifications and see if there is any Twitter drama, even though this holds no real importance to my life. Between all this, I'll get a few texts and Snapchats and I'll check up on Instagram. These apps are an addiction, an impulse that I can't control. It's as if they're programmed into me. The site I waste the most time on is Tumblr, where I have 12,000 posts. This is how we communicate and share information with the world. They are our modern-day news sources. Once someone tweets something, every person that follows her will know about her life instantaneously. At the same time, Twitter is a diary. Basically whatever pops into my mind, I tweet. It's convenient, but at the same time, I might not want others to know every piece of information that I post. Facebook, unlike Twitter, has become less important in my life, because it has turned into a popularity contest. The number of likes someone gets on a photo or the number of friends she has determines her rank in society, even if she doesn't really know these people. I try not to let these apps shape my relationships, although they do cause me to procrastinate, and I am sometimes envious of what I see online, if someone gets a new car, or posts about her vacation. Also, I don't work as efficiently as I used to because of all the distractions. Molly G., 15, from Atlanta, wrote that Tumblr brings people together while at the same time fomenting teen "drama" and cliquish behavior: Tumblr plays such a large role in my life and the lives of my peers. It has helped me to connect with people my age around the globe, and for that, I am thankful. But globally connected Web sites like Tumblr and Twitter also harm teenagers. Teenagers tend to form niches on Tumblr in particular. We make friends and share thoughts and opinions. I found a home in the "Gossip Girl" community. It was nice to have a group of people that shared my guilty pleasure. These communities can give us insecure teenagers a superiority complex. Imagine, you have a tight-knit group of friends from all over the globe. You all are so much alike in your beliefs. Having the support from these people gives you more confidence. You become so comfortable with these opinions that you decide that other people on the site, all with their own little communities that may feel differently from yours, are just wrong. The end product is teenagers who are ridiculously judgmental. Maybe it is because of the style of blog you have. Another source of tension can be a ship, when you group fictional characters into couples. When two ships conflict, knives come out in the form of words. We experience enough judgment at school. Now this Web site, praised for creating a place where users are incredibly open-minded, is full of prejudiced people so ready to either brush you to the side or attack you because you are different from them. Zineb O., 17, from Johannesburg, wrote about the illusion of true friendship and intimacy in the world of Facebook friends: I have 1,727 Facebook friends. As soon as I wake up, my first reflex is to check my account. Whether it is on my phone or on my laptop, I long for the white and blue screen like a junkie for her dose. I smile as the red numbers appear in the upper left corner. Going through my notifications and messages, I lure myself with the futile yet gratifying feeling that I somehow matter to some of those friends. I scroll down an unending chain of green dots: people online with whom I barely have anything to discuss. In fact, I do not even know half of the people on my friend list, but I literally share my life story with them. With every album upload and every status update, I sacrifice my privacy to their curiosity, in exchange for a pseudo social life. I have 1,727 Facebook friends, but I too often feel lonely. Whenever I try bursting my virtual bubble, whenever I shut down my laptop, I am alone. Outside my house or at school, the few people I recognize all have headphones on, like a giant billboard with a "DO NOT DISTURB" poster closing them off to any human interaction. Those who don't are too busy texting, their fingers stroking their keyboards at a mind-boggling speed, or playing the latest video game app they've downloaded. I have 1,727 Facebook friends, but my social life is trivial. Technology has made me more wired than ever before: constantly connected to an effervescent network of so-called friends, most of whom I have never seen in real life. I became addicted to the feeling of always being under scrutiny, unable to bear solitude and detachment. I had even started deriving a foolish pride out of my Facebook popularity; however, I would now forgo 1,726 of them for one person I can count on. I have 1,727 Facebook friends, but such a number is vain; for the word "friend" has nowadays become meaningless. Jason O., 17, from Johannesburg, wrote about the limitations of Skype in nurturing social-emotional growth: I stare blankly at an article, struggling to stay awake long enough to read a single sentence. Then a notification appears at the top-left-hand side of my screen and it reads, "You have one new message from Kwabena _______. Suddenly I am filled with energy, anticipating what the message might say. I open Skype, see that little "one" in its gray bubble next to my cousin's name. Thus begins another three-hour conversation on Skype. Surprisingly, Skype came late into my life. It arrived after I had gone through a negative experience with other social networks, especially Facebook, so I was skeptical about the idea. But I had to join when my Ghanaian parents wanted an easier way to communicate with me while I was attending a boarding school in South Africa. I spend most of my time on Skype now, but ironically, my parents are the people I chat with the least. My relationships now revolve around Skype, and I find that now I have most of my essential conversations digitally. On the one hand, this gives me the advantage of being able to read through important messages and go over critical information. On the other hand, I end up losing the skill of effective human interaction. I am losing the ability to process and digest information on the spot and handle complex emotions effectively whenever I experience them. One good example was when my roommate confronted me on a trivial matter. I got angry because of his inflammatory language, and since this was not Skype, where I can think before I reply, I ended up shouting back at him unintelligibly. All my good points were lost in all the clutter and the argument did not end well. Though Skype may now be an integral part of my life, I am doing my best to reduce the time I spend on it, and hopefully I can go back to being the great "social machine" I once was. Vivian Q., 14, from Marlboro, N.J., writes that her generation is becoming so addicted to socializing online that it is losing its ability to socialize in person: In a world full of e-mail notifications, beeping phones and Facebook posts, we become entangled, like flies in this web of social media and technology. This innovative movement in our history, the scientific revolution, has yielded both positive and negative consequences, ultimately changing how we live our lives. I only use my e-mail, search engines and occasionally Twitter - my current addiction. I used to spend hours talking to my friends on my e-mail; then, when I finally realized I had five tests the next day that I had to study for, I ended up losing sleep and not doing as well as I would have liked. This has scared me enough to keep me away from Facebook and texting. Meanwhile, in school, the small hour allocated to socializing in person (lunch) is instead spent socializing on phones. Friends smile at their devices and send Snapchats; others text. While the number of our "friends" on Facebook soars to thousands, the number of real friends dwindles. This quandary, this inverse proportion, has distorted the way we look at the world. Our relationships have become more superficial - those online can only see the surface of our ocean of emotions. There might be waves, yes, but the undercurrents and riptides beneath are increasingly being hidden. Oyenuga Joshua O., 17, from Honeydew, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa, wrote about a similar theme: I got my first BlackBerry about a year and a half ago. At the time it seemed to be the best thing to happen to me. I remember my first day peeling off the rubber casing on the front of its screen and simply dazzling in amazement. As a shy 16-year-old Nigerian boy, this was exactly what I wished for. A single device for Twitter, Facebook, BlackBerry Messenger and e-mail was my gateway to a digital utopia that accepted me, offering all the attention I craved literally at the push of a button. This awkward kid suddenly gathered confidence when behind his keypad. But slowly my ability and desire to socialize began to erode. All the appreciation and gratification I needed existed on this global network of people. Deep, complex layers of emotions were simplified into characters representable by an ASCII code, smileys:) I could simplify my feelings through this device. I watched myself fall into an endless abyss of social reclusion. Six months later, my BlackBerry went missing, and my digital haven crumbled. I fell into slight depression for a few weeks, trying to adjust to the uncomfortably real society I was snapped back into. I felt alone. It was then I realized how much my capacity for human interaction had faded. I still used social networking, but only on my laptop, which I couldn't carry everywhere I walked - although I still managed to do it a ridiculous number of times. As a result, my social media use declined. I had to interact with those around me, and my relationships began to have more meaning. I had my first face-to-face romantic relationship. I began to re-realize the depth and capacity of human emotions. I truly felt happy. Last week I bought another BlackBerry, because I need a functional smartphone to organize my life. I know in a few months" time I might regret it. Yet I feel completely powerless. Mykaela T., 17, from Cumberland, Me., writes about the digital "American dream": If you don't take the time to involve yourself with Twitter and Facebook, you are a nobody. You are a geek, a freak and an oddball for not having the time to post, observe and interact with the people around you. Social media affects teenagers just as much, if not more, than actions that occur in our offline lives. We do not have to physically interact to mentally interact with people. Social media consumes our lives, tearing time away from studying, writing and reading. The whole thing is like a game, and if you are good at the game, you are popular. You have to have wit, other social skills and many friends. The goal of the game is to win. You want to beat everyone else out and get to the top, just like everything else in life. The more people like you, the more friends you have and the more popular you are, the faster you can get there. When you have enough friends to get a verified page, you know you have won. And this goal, well, it can only be conquered through beauty, intelligence and talent. If you only don't have beauty, then forget about it. The perception of you being a beautiful person with lots of friends, money and fame is the American Dream. Not the old American Dream of starting from nothing and working your way to owning a farm. But the new one, where people go from being ugly and overweight, untalented and poor, to being beautiful with lots of money and caring people around them. Social networking has made this the dream that consumes our minds daily. It is a dream that social media is constantly reminding us about and taking so much time out of our lives trying to reach. Jane M., 14, from Middletown, N.J., writes about the positive power of social media tools like Tumblr: The piece of technology that I use the most frequently is Tumblr. You may be thinking that Tumblr is just a site for teenagers to post pictures and gape at celebrities, but it is much more than that. Sure, people do post gossip and photos, but I've also found that the site is a place for people to share things such as literature, music and other interests, as well as personal stories. It is very comforting to log on to a Web site and see that other people think the same way you do, or that they share your same beliefs. Tumblr is also an amazing place where people from around the world display their talents. From Photoshop creations to works of poetry, it is really quite inspiring to see all of the different passions that Tumblr users have and are willing to share with the world. Believe it or not, Tumblr can be a type of therapeutic tool for some people. It's a way to freely express yourself without ridicule and without being shot down. I think the reason that this is true is that there are so many people on the site, and at least one person knows exactly how you're feeling and can relate in some way. In a way, Tumblr has made me a more open-minded and accepting person. Seeing all of the different types of people in all different types of situations has made me realize that everyone is going through their own struggles and that no one should be judged before you get to know them. It sounds cliché, but it's true, and Tumblr has taught me that.