How many text messages have you sent in the last month, ten, twenty, a thousand, forty- thousand? Do you spend more time texting than talking to your friends and family? Has technology taken over your life and made you socially awkward? By technology improving it has taken over the way we communicate with other people. Facts show that people who use the internet and chat rooms are less likely to “go to parties, socialize, and are even less likely to spend time with their friends and family” (Nie and Hillygus 1). Over the years technology has advanced to a point where we don’t have to see someone to talk to them. Instead we rely on Facebook, Skype, Ichat, and cell pones to communicate with our friends and family. Today many people are addicted to communication by technology; this addiction to technology has damaged our social abilities to talk face-to-face.

Most people now a days incorporate technology into every thing they do. Now schools offer online courses. Online courses “work against the learning of what are called social values” (Postman 1). These values are the values like “following lessons, share everything play fair put things back where you found them and cleaning up you own mess” these are the simple things we learned in kindergarten (Postman 1). If children don’t learn these values how are they going to make it in the real world? When they get a job how are they going to know how to interact around other people if they have never been around other people before. Technology simply doesn’t teach these values.

Facebook, Skype, and Ichat have make people social awkward because all they know how to do is chat over the internet. Chatting and internet use has a “negative influence on individuals and their social skills” (Affonso 1). By using chat rooms it affects our way of talking face to face with other people. The internet also increases “misery loneliness and a decline in overall psychological well being… also they don’t keep up with as many friends and they spend less time talking to their families” (Affonso 1). They don’t talk to their friends and family because they are so obsessed with what the Internet has to offer. Instead of going to the movie with their friends or doing something fun with their family they are in their room chatting or looking at notifications that they have form Facebook. They then lose their friends that they no longer hang out with because they have and addiction to the internet. They then develop loneliness and sadness because the internet is all that they have.

The biggest thing that distracts children form their friends is their IPods. You get so involved with your IPod that “you are no longer obligated to interact with the factors of everyday life” (Song 1). Instead of talking with you friend while you are with them you have your headphones in and are listing to the new song you just bought. Because of IPods “interaction between individuals is slowly diminishing” (Song 1). We no longer like to talk when we see other people. We are so obsessed with our games and songs that we no longer care about seeing friends.

Some might argue that the internet and chat rooms can bring people together. Jean-Francisco Coget and Yamauchi Yutaka believe that “internet van make it easier to keep in touch with friends and you can encounter new friends” (1). I do believe that internet is a way to stay in touch with friends but then when you see them in the mall and have never talked to them face to face you are not going to know what to do. Sure you talk to them on line all the time but you have never really spent time with them. When you meet friends online do you know who they really are? The ability to talk to multiple people you don’t know can be very dangerous. You don’t always know who are really talking to if you have never met them before. I also don’t concur with this argument because it is an unreliable testimony. The place they got their information from was written in 2002 and clearly things have changed since then.

People also believe that IPods can bring people together. Jen Harris talks about how they have IPod parties on campus once a month. She says that this party and “ IPods bring people together” (Harris 1). Sure it brought people together it was a party and you were suppose to bring you iPods. This one time thought is selective sampling iPods wont all ways bring people to together here. This was one party. Most people with iPods walk around with them in their ears not caring about what is going on around them.

Technology has turned into something that our lives revolve around. Most of the time it is all we think about and all we care about. If we don’t learn values and how to talk face to face with other people how are we going to survive in the real world? Soon we wont even know how to talk to some one with out it being awkward. When we try to communicate with other countries on business we aren’t going to communicate to them by text we are going to have to talk to them in face-to-face conversation. Technology is becoming the most important and only thing we know. We are forgetting the most important things in our life God, family and friends.