Let me start off by saying, I weep for the future. You will see me say this often. Why do I weep you may ask?  Because our future is in the hands of today’s youth and today’s youth lack social skills. (No, social media does NOT count).  Why do they lack social skills? Because they are the descendants of the information age.  The computer age. The death of the conversation age.  So much is done behind the screen these days which is ironic considering I am typing this for my blog….that can only be viewed via computer of some sort.  Of course I understand that times are constantly changing and with those changes one must adapt or get left behind. But this era of quick, and trite answers, and “conversations” based on characters, and emojis, and not spoken words will lead to disaster. (Remember I told you I was dramatic) It’s a disaster because some folks haven’t learned how to switch between the smartphone world and the real world.  In the smartphone world you can literally reach thousands maybe millions of people in a matter of seconds.  You never have to see their faces, or spend five seconds with these people.  You can’t enjoy their company.  You get to put your words, good or bad into the universe and then you can hide.  Or when people take offense to those words you can say ” Oh I didn’t mean it that way, you misinterpreted what I meant”. It’s easy to do that because there is no context. In the real world there are people, REAL people with reactions and feelings and you can’t escape how a person receives you because the output is instantaneous.  It has changed the way people even date.  More and more people meet via sites like Match and eHarmony.  Your representative works overtime.  But what happens when it’s time for the REAL you to show up?  What happens when you meet face to face and realize there’s no chemistry, just words? What happens when you’re at work and you mistakenly slip into text prose while composing an email? (I’ve seen this happen more times than I should) What happens when someone is trying to talk to you and all you can add to the conversation is “ummmmm…..” I referenced the youth at the top of this post because they are the generation that has never known a world without the internet or social media in it.  Let that sink in for a minute. Talk about lost in translation.