The phones in our pockets are always getting smarter every day. Most teens own a laptop, tablet, or any electronic device to stay connected with social media cites, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many more. Teens post everything they do throughout the day. With a click of an icon and now all their friends can see where and what they are doing every second. Technology hurts teen’s interpersonal relationships with friends and family.

Teenagers no longer talk face to face with one another. Sending texts is a more popular way of communicating with one another instead of meeting up to chat. Studies from Pew Research Center found that half of American teenagers send more than fifty text messages a day. The Internet and American Life Project stated that two thirds of teens are mostly going to use their smart phone to text friends than to call them. The lack of face to face communication has created a detached society.

Teenagers are becoming more isolated from friends and family. Teens are hanging out with friends but they are mostly hanging out with their phone. They tend to text, email, chat on Facebook, you name it. They are texting right in the middle of a date or maybe even during dinner where you are suppose to talk as a family. According to Norman and Sunshine in their paper “The Impact of Internet Use on Sociability” states that teens spend more than 100 minutes on the Internet and spend less time with family and friends. Alex Lickerman states that teens often find themselves replacing themselves replacing physical relationships with electronic ones. Teens feel they’re connecting effectively with others via the Internet, but too much electronic relating ends up creating a sense of social isolation.

Others may argue that technology is bringing teenagers closer together. The Pew Internet reported that 53% of questioned families said that new technologies had increased the quality of their contact with distant family members. This may be true in some cases, however Laura Shumaker, a mother of three sons in the Bay Area suburbs, noticed recently that her 17 year old son, John, “was keeping up with friends so much on Facebook that he has become more withdrawn about face to face interactions.” Teens would not know the emotions on other people’s faces because they only see their texted emojis.

Technology is slowly destroying interpersonal relationships with family and friends. If we don’t change the way we communicate with each other then soon we would become socially isolated from one another. Technology has changed the way we communicate but it has not improved the way we interact and the strength of the relationships will soon drift apart.