Technology improved communication then destroyed it. In my father’s early days, you would get off a public bus with new friendships forged. People would care about strangers, helping was easy. People loved making new friends. Couples enjoyed each other’s companies, no technology to help them. Technology has destroyed human interactions and social skills.

There used to be a time when helping was easy and honesty came easy. Nowadays, we hear things like ‘Mind your own business’, ‘Don’t give unsought opinions’, and other anti-social stuffs. Those are actually reasonable sayings, but when you see someone carrying three heavy suitcases and you’re muttering to yourself under your breath: ‘Mind your own business’, then I think it’s time to reevaluate the meanings of the sayings. It used to be perfectly normal to ask for help from strangers, but torture is now preferable to asking for help. In elevators, groups of people make no attempts at discussions and everyone stares at each other like dummies.

When someone sits in a reception room or a bus with other specimens of humanity, it used to be that reasonable political and economical discussions would be made. Now, people are hunched over their phones and laptops, struggling to communicate with someone who is hundreds/thousands of miles away from them. Funny enough, when they get together with those people, they become engrossed in communications with someone else who is hundreds of miles away. This craziness is evidenced by the televisions that are now being put up in reception rooms. People think it’s necessary because they’ll rather watch some dude talking on TV rather than talk with each other. Tech cool, huh?

I believe one of the reasons divorce rates are on the rise is because couples have nothing to discuss when they are in an empty room. One of the real tests of communication between two people is how they survive for an hour in an empty room, without laptops, phones and televisions. Couples have nothing to discuss anymore apart from office gossips and family affairs. You did not win each other’s hearts by talking about your offices and mothers (hell, maybe you did). Couples now have televisions in their bedrooms and it appears as if they are actually running from themselves. Can’t people look each other in the eyes and communicate anymore? Must it be through Instant Messaging? The true meaning of communication is getting lost and people are not getting scared at all.

One of the real tests of communication between two people is how they survive for an hour in an empty room, without laptops, phones and televisions.

Now, people are cowards. There used to be a time when people would speak out in group discussions about issues that concern them. There would be debates and stuff. Nowadays, people are angry and they go on twitter to rant anonymously and they feel good. I was debating on Whatsapp the other day and my Chief Opponents could not even look me in the eyes when we met in person, hell, I was burning to continue the discussion. Technology has made us cowards.

Ask a teenager what he discusses with his friends and he gets a defensive and blank look on his face. He does not even know, yet he spends hours on group chats with them. So he says, ‘Dude, music and girls stuffs nah’. Every single teen I’ve asked.

This short article is the type that deserves a book written on it. Hell, maybe I’ll even consider it.