All of modern society - especially the younger generation - has not only experienced the enormous benefits, but also felt the severe consequences of advanced technology. Professionalism and interpersonal communication have both suffered in recent years as a direct result of technological advances.

Our modern culture obsesses over technology. Everywhere you go, you see peoples’ noses buried in their phones, but it is an understandable obsession- recent advances in technology are certainly fascinating. In a remarkably short time, society has received access to and gained control of the vast information of the world wide web. The internet became available in 1991, and according to a National Center for Education Statistics study by 1994 only 3% of classrooms had internet access, but in 2005 94% of classrooms possessed internet access.

My father served in the Marine Corps for 24 years, and as an officer in the greatest military in the world he often saw and experienced technology before anyone else. When I asked him about the first time he was introduced to the internet, he responded, “None of us believed it. We laughed when we were told every person in the world would be connected by the world wide web.” That was only about 25 years ago. Unlike my father, I cannot remember a time without internet. This crazy and alien concept to the older generation is a simple reality for mine.

Although technology has improved our standard of living, these fantastic advances have recently been found potentially hazardous to young minds. Many parents use their phones or tablets to distract their children and prevent uncomfortable situations while thinking very little of the dangers. This appeasement allows technology to act as a replacement for interaction and mitigate discomfort in young children.

Misbehavior often gets rewarded with handheld entertainment. Whenever children become bored or unhappy, they will act up so those feelings can be relieved by their parents’ technology. They will never deal with boredom, and they will never need to find entertainment anywhere but a screen. Satisfaction is never further than their parent’s pocket. The impressionable young minds of children build a parallel between comfort and technology, and that connection destroys their willingness and ability to interact with others.

The brains of technology abusers resemble those of drug addicts. Comparable amounts of dopamine are released in the brain when a message alerts a technology addict, as when a drug addict injects heroine. The convenience of this extreme pleasure received from artificial interaction is so easy, and it seems so great because it is just that, artificial.

True emotion and personal connection cannot be properly conveyed through textual conversation. The curtain of technology hides all of our insecurities and short comings. Anything and everything can be hidden or created with little if any consequence. The person you text or instant message may very well be someone entirely different than the person you meet.

The transition from textual to verbal communication is often difficult and awkward. Technology offers us limitless time to formulate the perfect response which is an advantage we do not hold in real time and conversation. Speaking from experience, I can be so smooth texting, but when I am in the presence of the girl I am talking with for the first time, I often find myself at a loss for words. Often times, very little, if any, of textual conversations are natural.

We learn to interact through interaction. If there is no practice, then there will be no improvement. As I stated earlier, technology offers us an escape from potentially awkward situations and acts as a replacement for human interaction, but the most recent advancements and fads in technology are related to human interaction. These innovations are our escapes from rejection.

Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat have all become extremely popular because they are ways to communicate. Most Americans use at least one form of social media, so we can “meet” an immense number of people. This frees us from rejection by allowing us to skip the difficult stages of relationships painlessly because there is always someone else to move onto. No work is involved in building relationships; we can google search for friends.

While there is nothing wrong with being able to communicate with people with similar interests, the ease of technology makes us lazy when we are away from it. We can’t click next with employers, coworkers, and mutual friends. We have who we have, and we have to do the best we can with that. Real relationships involve work. But, if we built a dependence on technology growing up and always use it to escape discomfort and awkward situations, we will never escape them.

Technology helps us in all sorts of situations, and that is exactly why it was made. It is an aid, not a replacement. We can now talk to people on the other side of the world, but we have always possessed the ability to talk to our neighbors, so use it! We need to embrace our ability to go build real relationships with real people. Laziness breeds failure and incompetence.

The less human interaction we incur, the weaker our social skills become. In this society dominated by technology, we have begun to experience progressively less human interaction. By no means am I saying technology is bad. Technology is great, and it has vastly expanded our communication capabilities; however, during this expansion we are experiencing a decay in our verbal communication skills. The way we use and abuse technology is atrocious, and technology will never be able to replace human interaction.