I’m sure plenty of us use social networks as a source to link up with friends and family, even as a different way to communicate. However, have you ever been on Twitter for hours, constantly clicking the refresh button and hoping that new information will pop up on your newsfeed?

We teenagers run to Twitter or Instagram as an alternative for texting or calling one another.

These little things are what make us lazy and non-communicative. We will speak to someone online but won’t start a conversation in person, which put us in awkward situations. Social networks are where we go when boredom strikes. There are some people who meet most of their friends online but are very comfortable with them in person. However, there are also people who would rather hide behind a screen to introduce themselves rather than deal with face-to-face contact.

Behaviors like these ruin our communication. It is probably why many of us turn to Twitter or Instagram-because it is easier and isn’t as awkward. Yes, social networks are there for us to interact with others, but Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are not our life.

It isn’t entirely a bad thing, but it does weaken our ability to be social. It creates a barrier to be more social on websites and quieter in person. When we were younger, we didn’t have websites like these or computers to sit at just to communicate. Even children nowadays, ages 7-11, own iPhones and/or iPads and are attached to them day and night because that’s all they know.

You even see them at such young ages posting pictures of their friends in a collage just to say “Happy Birthday!”

Social networks are ruining our social skills. Perhaps in the future, when we get older and invest in our own careers, we may distance ourselves from websites like Twitter or Facebook because we do have a life outside of the Internet. Perhaps our current fascination with it is harmless, but right now it certainly seems to be too much.