A really interesting set of connections - a line of thought worth pursuing. I'm mildly sceptical of the notion of Internet (or social media, or game) addiction, though I've supervised projects and adjudicated on a few papers on the topic, so I accept that there are arguments to be made. But the cage metaphor is a useful way to create focus that avoids pronouncing too much one way or the other: whether or not it's addiction, there are certainly people that feel some compulsion and/or constraint, beyond the intrinsic pleasure of using such systems. That's interesting, whatever the cause.

As with all things technological, it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it. For some people, using some systems, social media are anything but isolating (e.g. dating sites, netroots phenomena, community action, not to mention the notably personal use of emerging ephemeral tools like Snapchat or WhatsApp for sustaining and nurturing meatspace relationships). For some people (notably those isolated for some other reason), social media can be incredibly liberating. One of the reasons I much prefer critiques from the likes of Sherry Turkle, Jaron Lanier, and Eli Pariser, is that they start from a vastly more technically savvy background, and they recognize both the value and the risk in ways populist authors like Carr and Keen deliberately fail to do.

I can't recall seeing much recent research on the subject, but it was always a good answer to those that complained about modern kids retreating into virtual spaces like computer games that research overwhelmingly showed that such kids were more active, social, and engaged in other areas of life too. I have become complacent in believing this to remain true. It depends on many factors, and the boundaries of technical and social space are shifting all the time. Most researchers either seem to want to find averages (an enticing but terrible idea for such complex phenomena) or rely on case studies or (in the case of Carr, Keen, etc) just anecdotal evidence and personal observation. Neither extreme - average or specific- is of much use in itself. From the qualitative studies, we need to generate good testable models to help differentiate kinds of involvement,  kinds of system, and different ways of using them, that can be applied in larger empirical studies. We need technologists to tinker with ways of building tools that apply or generate models, which in turn can have very large effects on the future behaviours, and that may invalidate previous studies because they change the variables. Reliable models are thin on the ground and constantly subject to challenge from new technologies, changing large-scale patterns, and so on. It's what makes this field really interesting and poorly charted territory!

 Critical thinking skill is very important in our everyday life. Most health care professionals use critical thinking in solving, analyzing and evaluating problems. I find this cheat sheet very useful because it creates an easy way of solving a problem. One can also use the questions and the corresponding word in the cheatsheet by applying and analyzing a problem when discussing or writing a paper.