After living overseas twice in my life (two separate three-year stays), I now live in the same metropolitan community where I grew up, as the author didn't when she had the experiences that shaped her opinion. ("My own peak use of social media arose during a period of painful isolation. It was the autumn of 2011, and I was living in New York, recently heartbroken and thousands of miles from my family and friends.") Some of the people I interact with online have known me since almost fifty (!) years ago, a few of them continually over all that while. Those friends who are still in this town I see in person once in a while, but I hear a lot more of their news in between face-meeting through online communication.
Because I've lived in more than one country, and some of my classmates and colleagues and one child have scattered hither and yon, there isn't anywhere on the planet where I can face-meet with all the people I like at the same time, but my second stay overseas (1998-2001) illustrated the power of the Internet to reduce feelings of loneliness and lack of connection while far away from most familiar friends, and helped me learn how to use online networks to enhance real-world friendships. These days, Facebook comes pretty close to being with all my friends all the time, and I like that. I come here on Hacker News, of course, pretty often, and here I can sometimes make a new kind of friend over shared interests.