Social media is becoming a drug and society is getting addicted.

What started Out as simple as email has now evolved into huge network giants such as including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Though it is a fun way to communicate, it is effecting our social skills tremendously.

“There has been a shift in the way we communicate; rather than face-to-face interaction, we’re tending to prefer mediated communication. We’d rather email than meet; we’d rather text than talk on the phone,” said Paul Booth, the assistant professor of media and cinema studies in the College of Communication at DePaul University.

Technology has made it easy to communicate with someone virtually, that we have forgotten how to talk with someone directly. We are slowly beginning to rely on it and making it a necessity in our everyday lives.

“I believe that social media is limiting our communication skills and we are starting to rely on it.  Think about it, these days it is a lot easier for us to text someone than it is to talk to them in person,” said Cynthia Nunez, a former student at New Mexico State University. “We are so absorbed in the media that we can’t even ask someone for a cup of coffee or even directions.”

The media is also starting to be enforced in the youth.

Elementary school kids, and sometimes even younger, are being supplied with phones and other different types of electronics, which is causing their communication skills to weaken at a very young age.

“I think we are starting to become socially erupt because we are starting to feel more comfortable with interacting online than interacting in real life,” said Marcos Martinez, a student at New Mexico State University. “It is scary seeing younger kids with technology and how it has become a big part of their life.”

Will the future be focused on technology and will our communication skills become extinct? Will we lose the social skill to be able to interact with one another?

“Face to face interaction is vital for society to function, as not everything can be done behind a screen and a keyboard. We need physical and social interaction to live. With the increasing amount of users and number of addictive-hours we spend on social media, face to face interaction is spiraling down,” said Rodrigo Campodonico on his blog post, Social Media’s Negative Impact On Society.

Society is beginning to give more credit to the virtual world than we are to the real world. Instead of going to the park to play with friends, we would rather play with them through a computer screen.

Technology was made to communicate with people, not replace them.

Social media can be a positive and negative thing. It is great that we can communicate with people all around the world, but we cant’ forget how to interact with each other in person. Our social skills are an important skill in life and we should strive to maintain that.