Is Technology Changing Our Relationships?

It’s a New World, With New Challenges…

Text me, Tweet me, e-mail me, Facebook me… What happened to call me, meet me, talk to me, write me, or just drop by and see me? Call me old fashioned, but I believe that all this technology is wreaking havoc on relationships. People rarely connect with each other through face to face meetings, voice conversations, or handwritten letters anymore. I believe this trend takes away from the emotional and physical contact that humans require to grow spiritually in a relationship.

When you use technology as the main basis for communication the emotional energy you intend in your message gets lost in the delivery. When you text, instead of having a verbal conversation with someone, the message you are trying to convey can easily get lost in translation. I have seen many arguments between people who misunderstood a text message because of an overused punctuation mark or a misplaced capitalization. If you were actually speaking to the person you would be able to pick up on minor inflections in their voices, pauses, or emotional energies exuded through the spoken word. You can also more easily pick up on lies or misinformation being presented to you. This is important. It can prevent you from being blindsided at a later date by weaknesses in the relationship that could go undetected when you communicate via text message.

The same goes for e-mail. When a person hand writes a letter a lot can be determined by the actually energy exuded in the handwriting process. Many handwriting analysis experts will tell you that you can discover many details about a person simply by studying their handwriting. This obviously gets lost in translation when a computer font is used.

Cyber dating, cyber bulling, and cyber sex have greatly diminished an entire generation’s ability to deal with face to face relationships and/or disagreements. People seem to feel that they can say or do anything online. The computer keeps them from having to directly face the individual they are dealing with which, for many, makes them feel brave or empowered. Unfortunately, dealing with personal emotions in this manner is not a healthy situation. Since you cannot directly see the facial expressions or body language of the person you are communicating with, you cannot possibly understand the positive or negative impact your words might be having on that individual.

I encourage everyone to explore the old fashioned face to face meetings. Remember those times when you could look directly into a person’s eyes and just know that they were into you? Seeing that gave you the courage to push forward and explore a new relationship. Remember fighting with your best friend and realizing you had gone too far because her shoulders dropped and her eyes welled up with tears? Seeing those reactions gave you the chance to fall back and apologize before the friendship was ruined forever. Get out there and truly connect with people before you forget how it‘s done. Don’t hide behind your computer keyboard to express your true feelings. If you want to break up, make up, or hook up… do it face to face!