Our generation lacks communication skills and face-to-face interaction. With technology today we constantly live our lives virtually. So much time and effort is put into making our social media look a certain way. We put a filter on our lives, causing our real issues to be lost in communication because we don’t know how to decipher reality from fake internet lives.  

Today, hanging out is not done without phones in hand. We take pictures of everything, staging where we are and  how we act. With texting and Snapchat, is it easy to say things we can’t say face to face to a person. We are emboldened by the confidence and security of never having to see the person we may be talking too or about. 

Oftentimes our interactions in person feel awkward and unnatural because we can’t talk about real issues in person. We have lost touch with what it means to talk to someone and be real with them. Our conversations only flow when we have the time to text back after we’ve had time to think about it. When we go for interviews, we are shocked when we are put on the spot because we don’t have the time to think on our feet as we do over the phone. We don’t know how to communicate in person.

This is becoming a problem in our generation and those younger. Kids today learn life on a computer screen. They try to swipe the pages of a book because they are so used to reading on an iPad they don’t understand there is more out there. Instead of writing cards and mailing them, we shoot a quick text and seemingly become more and more impersonal. Our communication skills are lacking in more ways than one.

A key ingredient to any good relationship is communication. Today we lack that with even our closest friends. On our phone, we have so many friends we talk to, and in-person it is rare we even say hi to one another in passing.

Now, with all of the chaos of online schooling and no personal interaction exchanged, it begins to worry me about how we will do when this is over. Personal interaction is being washed away and the significance of a real conversation is diminishing. 

I think it is extremely important to build real-world connections with people beyond our phone contacts, Snapchat friends, and Instagram followers. It’s not necessarily that everyone in our generation does not want to talk to one another; it is perhaps that we do not know how anymore. With basically every aspect of life accessible through phone screens, there is less need to learn the skills to interact. 

If our generation ever desires to communicate with one another without a device, we will need to stop settling for screens. Communication can only improve with practice and real-life experience. We need to be forced to communicate, and I hope our families and educators will encourage us to do so. If we want communication skills, we must work for it. Our communication skills can only go up from here. It’s time to engage with people outside our contacts and focus more on the real-world, if we just take a look above our phone screen.