Up until recent history, face-to-face talk was essential. There was no other way to communicate with others. But now there are a vast number of ways to communicate with people all over the globe.

We have social networking like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. With all these systems we can talk for hours up with 140 words or less, pictures and pages.

In addition to social networks, we have the ability to send text within seconds. With all these different ways to communicate, we now have the tendency to talk at each other, not with each other.

As teens, we enjoy sharing our moments with each other via the Internet, gaining followers and likes.

There comes a point though, where many take the chance of being anonymous and create a new personality on social networks like fake online profiles.

Role-playing on social networks is a popular where. Teens can be online and feel free to act as whomever they choose. Many tend to rely on this new persona they’ve made up because offline they lack social skills.

Another problem with communication today is not knowing how the other person you are talking to is feeling. After saying “lol” 20 times through text, it’s most likely neither are laughing out loud.

Face-to-face talks consist of body language and facial expressions.
Asking someone if they’re alright it can usually seen in a person, while through texts or social networks, it is impossible. You cannot know what anyone feels or who they really are.

We’re all just reading empty words posted online or sent to us. Words that can be read as happy or sad when the writer can be neither.

With all the technology building, it seems we are losing the communication we once had. We don’t gather around to sit and talk about things, we send texts and Kiks.

Talking on the phone is now less common and even awkward. We have so much to say and words are now typed up, rarely heard.
Feelings are now replaced with emojis that mean nothing when the person sending them might feel the opposite.

An English teacher once told my class that being shy wasn’t going to get us anywhere and we needed to give ourselves a voice to do well in anything in life.

We need to speak our minds. We need to learn to accept ourselves and be ourselves always. We need to put down the phone and talk to each other.