I’m an extrovert, and so is my brother, which I find a little funny because my parents are introverts, and we must be exhausting for them. So when social media came around, I was all over it. What could be more exciting for an extrovert than to connect with friends, reconnect with long-lost friends, and socialize?

Also, being an organizational and efficiency freak (think borderline OCD), social media enticed me with its streamlining capabilities. Think about it, I was now going to be able to tell a story once to ALL my friends instead of a million times to each individual. It was bliss and opened up a lot of extra time for me to do more activities, experience more fun, and pay attention to more people (extrovert…remember, people are essential to us).

Time passed, and technology evolved at a head-spinning speed. Suddenly, one day I looked around, and everyone else was looking down. Physical interaction was a distant memory.

The reality hit me with the impact of a freight train. The social media I had so happily welcomed and embraced as my means to connect had ultimately become the destruction of actual community. The physical isolation and the safety of hiding behind a screen allowed for politeness and kindness to dissolve, and the potential for anonymity created an outlet for the darker side of humanity.

So while I was ecstatic at finding my best friend from 1976, who I hadn’t seen or heard from since we were at school together in Singapore, I was also beginning to miss meeting people out for drinks, a movie, or bowling. Now all my friends would only talk to me on Facebook and be too busy to meet me for coffee.

The extrovert began to sulk, realizing that the social media I had been so excited to embrace was now causing isolation. I saw kids standing right next to the person they were texting. When I asked the kid why he didn’t just talk to his friend standing right beside him, he shrugged and mumbled, “I don’t know.” I mean, come on, our kids don’t know how to actually talk to each other?

With social media, we have lost the art of conversation and the ability to connect meaningfully with our fellow humans. Today being social is all typing, memes, and emojis. I miss getting dressed up to meet friends out for fun. Now I don’t even have to get out of my jammies if I don’t want to, and no one is the wiser.

Does wanting us all to get off the electronics and physically engage with each other make me the revolutionary or the old fart who reminisces about the days gone by?