Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that communication seems to be breaking down as of late in modern society? And yes, I will be very frank and admit that I do specifically mean between the sexes. There used to be an art in the way that males and females talked to one another. Now, with the invention of the telephone and computer, it is rare if men and women ever even have a conversation face to face much less get anything out of it.

So why is this? I mean, telephones were supposed to facilitate communication and computers are supposed to facilitate almost everything. So why then do they both make communication harder?

I think the real culprit, however, is the computer. All these new fangled ways of talking to people via Instant Message or WinPopup or whatever your system is called. I will admit that I myself have been pulled into this trap. I have two such systems in addition to e-mail on my computer and for the most part I love them because I can talk to people hundreds of miles away for free, which is really nice. There are, however, those of my friends who abuse this and consider that talking to me for five minutes on one of these about absolutely nothing is enough to keep up our friendship. The worst offenders are my friends on campus. I go over to their rooms and they have absolutely nothing to say. It is as if they have lost the ability to talk face to face with someone and instead need to rely on having a screen in front of their face to feel comfortable in a conversation. I have one friend and almost every serious conversation that we have had has been via computer. In fact, when confronted face to face, we tend to only be able to manage a hello. It is quite pathetic.

Now maybe if this form of communication actually worked I wouldn't mind that it was the only way some of my friends, specifically the guys, choose to communicate with me. But, the computer does nothing but screw up conversations. Now, I am a very sarcastic person and all of my friends know this. Yet even knowing it and me knowing that they are all rather sarcastic does not prevent us from misunderstanding each other over the computer. Why? Because sarcasm does not translate over IM. I have gotten into more fights and more miscommunications because sarcasm wasn't understood or because sarcasm was put somewhere it shouldn't have been in an IM conversation. Why do I use IM as a major means of communicating if it causes problems in relationships? Obviously if you are asking this , you are one of the people who didn't agree with me in the first part of this article. You see all of my friends that I get into misunderstandings with over IM are the ones that only know how to talk over IM. If I could avoid having serious conversations on computer I would but sometimes that is just impossible with certain people.

So, in conclusion, I would just like to suggest if you are one of those people who keeps up complete friendships over a computer and think that a five minute WinPopup experience will keep your friendship going for another month....try giving your friend a call or just pop in and see them. You would be amazed at the appreciation.