The mail…the phone…the computer…the cellphone…the smartphone! Stop and think about how much our methods of communication have changed in the course of less than a century (and how much shorter the messages have gotten too). When was the last time you’ve taken a while to write a well thought out letter? The closest thing to a letter now-a-days would be an email, but not everyone communicates through that every day; not our generation, anyhow. We’re all about texting, tweeting, posting, instagraming the silliest things. There are more ways to share but we are sharing things that don’t matter instead of communicating how we truly feel.

Truth be spoken we are using less and less words to communicate ourselves as time goes on. Just think of your desperation when the teacher says you need to write a full sentence response; most teens in the class begin to whine “WHY?” right away. If that isn’t proof of our lack of communication skills, I’m not sure what is.

News flash, it isn’t supposed to be that hard! Ever had your mother say “use your words”? There is a difference between the way our parents talk, and the way we talk; same thing goes when we think about the way our grandparents talk and so on. It is an odd sight to see older people on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. They take the time to speak to each other instead of messaging about petty things. They have an old fashioned, casual conversation, where they use all their communication skills they developed as children; something we haven’t done a very good job on.

In the US, 77 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 29 use social networking, while just 23 percent of those 50 and over do so, says the Pew Research Center.

Some people will rather spend all day communicating through texts rather than talking to people. According TechCrunch.com, more than four billion messages are sent through Facebook every day. That is one message for every person in the world, pretty much.

However texts don’t express emotion. There are “emojis” which help, but your voice intonation isn’t there, and there are just many things lacking when reading text. Most people fail to get their point across the way they intended.

There are more and more people believing that starting and ending a relationship through text is okay when it isn’t. Text is a method, but not the best method, of communication. Keep in mind that most people would rather see your face as they are speaking about most things. Texting should be a method of talking with someone who’s not able to see you at that moment, not a way to talk to them when they are right in the next room. Please keep in mind you should NEVER start or end a relationship through text; it’s just cruel.