Did you know that learning social skills is crucial for kids between the ages of 2-8? In addition, the typical child is introduced to their first electronic at the age of four. Is technology ruining our friendships? The answer is yes. Technology is stunting our social growth when it is most important, and making us easier targets for sexual predators than ever, and finally is it slowly killing us?

To begin, the anxiety rate has significantly increased in the last two years, and most especially social anxiety. People nowadays have such bad anxiety when the teacher calls on someone random because we don't know how to properly talk in front of people  because we just text everyone what we want to say. Before people talked to the milkman and now we are terrified of the cashier at McDonald's!

Some may argue that technology doesn't stop us from talking to others but brings people who are far away together, but the flaw with that is, when you actually meet that person for the first time it's awkward because you can actually hear them laugh instead of  using emojis. Texting someone and talking to someone in person are completely different because when talking to someone in person you have body language to comprehend and you can't learn how to comprehend body language through text. Comprehension of facial expressions and body language are one of the key points that we need to learn at a young age so we can identify friends and enemies, but technology is stopping that from the get go or from the start.

Equally important as social skills is oxytocin, oxytocin is a hormone that will either give you the rush of your life or kill you. Oxytocin is a hormone that is released into the body when you hug someone you love or just touching someone in general. Just like everything else in the body; if you don't get enough of it your body will shut down slowly.

Arguably, people can say that talking to someone through text will give you the same satisfaction as talking to someone in person, but it's not true. Your brain doesn't recognize texts or a phone call as a person, so oxytocin isn't released into the body.

By the same token as social handicapping and death by machine, sexual assault is at an all time high thanks to technology. Let’s pretend that you were talking to someone online for months now and he/she are your other half. He/She likes the same music as you, values education as much as you, and now you are both thinking of meeting up for the first time. What you don't know is that according to ‘ Journals of Adolescence’, “ 85% of online sex crimes against minors, the offender creates a profile based off of your likes and dislikes.” This means that you may think that you are talking to Benny who you are very compatible with might actually be Greg who is the local sex offender.Talking to people online is risky business because you never truly know who you are talking to unlike meeting someone face to face. The virtual world is something that you can't touch, hear, or see who you are talking to, so there is no 100% way you can know who you are talking to.

Finally, pro-technology users might argue that chat room and apps today are user friendly no one actually get assaulted but on the contrary 40% of sexual soliciting happen on instagram or kik which are very popular apps. As said before, offenders lie and create profiles to your liking so you will be more comfortable with them and be more willing to meet up somewhere and that's when they strike.

With all this in mind, technology is the reason why most kids are scared to talk to strangers, or why suicide along with rape is at an all time high. The main point is that technology itself isn't bad it just makes it easier for us to do bad things. That is why we need to be more cautious with technology. If we tread with caution with technology it will reduce sexual soliciting, suicide, and help us make deep and valuable relationships with people instead of a hunk of wires. The future generations will be better speaks and be able to get their point across and solve the serious problems we are facing today like racism and war. This is when technology will be more helpful than harmful.