As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in the SUB on campus, watching students eat lunch on their breaks before going back to class. There’s a big group of fraternity guys conversing loudly in the middle of the SUB, a couple having lunch by themselves and a girl sitting quietly in the corner.

The students in the SUB are as diverse of a group as you can get, but they all have one thing in common. They are all glued to their smartphones.

While devices like iPhones and Blackberries have only been around for the last few years, the smartphones and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have taken over and permeated every aspect of our lives.

It’s gotten to the point where even little kids and the elderly are carrying iPhones. My grandma has a Facebook for crying out loud. Call me old fashioned, but when I was a kid, I was outside playing football after school, not cooped up in my room playing Call of Duty and yelling expletives at strangers on the Internet. I used to have actual interactions with my friends, not just texting and posting on Facebook walls.

As I look at what role smartphones and social media has taken in our society, my fear that the technology we are using has become more important than the people we are communicating with is becoming more of a reality.

Nowadays, people would much rather type out messages behind a faceless screen than use any other form of communication.  When was the last time you called someone and just had a conversation?  And I don’t mean your girlfriend or your mom.

When was the last time you called a friend just to talk to them?  When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone?

Communicating and having conversations with people is a vital part of what makes us human.  It helps us grow personally and it also helps us grow our relationships with our friends and family.

Tell me, what’s easier to connect with? Receiving a phone call, hand written letter and conversing in real life or receiving a text or a Facebook message?

Try this experiment out the next time you’re eating out with a group of friends.  When you get to the table, take all of your phones and stack them up in the middle of the table face down, that way no one can see if anything is on the screen.

If your phone goes off during the meal, don’t answer it.  If it’s an emergency, the person will call back.

Use this time to actually converse with the people at your table without the constant distraction of your iPhone. You may be amazed how much of a difference it will make and how much more you will be able to connect with the people around your table.

For some of us this may not be a problem, but some of us can’t imagine a minute without our smartphones in our hands.

It may be tough to wean off the iPhone at first, but at the end of the day it will be so worth it.

You’ll begin to value the relationships you have with people and look forward to that human interaction instead of plugging into a phone whenever you step out into public.

Just remember, it’s the relationships with people that matters in the end, not the technology.

When it’s all said and done, it’s your friends and family who will be there for you and will support you, not your iPhone.