someone's getting old...

i had a very interesting, but very disturbing class discussion just the other day.
we were talking about how cellphones have enroached on our face-to-face communication. case in point, people at a table in a restaurant who text rather than talk to each other or worse, people who talk, but would text periodically during a conversation. i try my best not to do these things. though admittedly, sometimes, i resort to them. but think about the friends we should have made or ideas we could have shared if we weren't constantly texting!
anyway, so i asked for my students' input about the topic. and it was so surprising for me to find that a good number of them found it commonplace to get to know people of the opposite sex just through texting!:O okay, call me old, but whatever happened to good-old spending time together, engaging in conversation? of course, the guys acknowledged that it was a "safe" way to relate to a girl they liked, because there was less at risk. but i say, why not take the risk? but that's just me.
of course, they pointed out that sometimes they would get sad when no one texts them throughout an entire day. or the text they're waiting for never comes. but they acknowledged, grudgingly, that they had a choice not to feel that way. not to let the technology "control" them. i'm all for technology--love it, as you know!--but we are people, we should be able to be masters of technology that we created, not the other way around. but maybe that's just me.