“I had this guy leave me a voice mail at work, so I called him at home, and then he e-mailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It’s exhausting.”

If you’ve ever related to the sentiment of this line from Drew Barrymore’s character in the recent hit movie “He’s Just Not That Into You,” then join the club. Why has technology replaced the good old-fashioned face-to-face conversation? Something needs to change.

Now before you start Twittering about the weird guy from the Daily Campus who wants to do away with the Digital Age, understand that I have an iPhone, a Facebook account (although I rarely update anything), and a blog. I usually get really excited by the newest gadgets and gizmos, but I am a little concerned about the way our generation leans and hides behind technology to communicate with others.

In a study released in 2005, researchers at Ball State University found that the average American spends more than nine hours a day interacting with some sort of media, including television, computers, radio, iPods and cell phones, and four years later that number is still growing. While much of that time is spent for necessary functions such as writing papers or putting together excel sheets for business proposals, much of it is spent communicating with others.

Last semester in Professor Tony Pederson’s Ethics of Convergent Media class, Pederson asked all the students if they had ever had a meaningful conversation by text message. If I remember correctly, only two girls raised their hand and their explanations hardly proved to be “meaningful.” Pederson went on to give his opinion on how people in our generation hide behind the “crutch” of technology as a way to avoid difficult conversations and not deal with the human emotions that happen in relationships.

While I agree with Pederson, I believe there is another side of this communication crisis: the illusion of popularity. Through programs such as Facebook and Twitter, we have exchanged a “mom-and-pop” method of communication, in which we have several close relationships with the people that we see on a regular basis, for a “Walmart” style in which most interactions are cheap and distributed to the masses. With technology as my primary means of communication, it is possible for the number of my friendships to go way up, but only if I’m okay with the quality of those relationships going way down. If I am really interested in how a friend is doing then I will call him and ask, not send a text message. Chances are that a text message is not enough space for them to give an honest answer anyway.

To be sure, there are times when technology is appropriate. Communication between multiple people, such as a professor to students or parents to children, can be effective and efficient through e-mails or online bulletin boards. However, the moment we hide behind a screen so as to avoid dealing with the human emotions or vulnerability that comes with close relationships, we cheapen what was meant to be deep and meaningful. This week, instead of e-mailing or posting a message on someone’s Facebook page, why not call them and schedule a time to sit and talk face-to-face?

– Bradley Olmstead

Associate Sports Editor