A Love-Hate Relationship with Technology Technology has become a thriving part of today's culture and is negatively impacting the way our children manage face-to-face communication skills because text messaging, Facebook, and other forms of social media have become the preferred way to communicate. This can be seen in our populations of pre-teens, teenagers and young adults. The awareness of a communication breakdown has become something to be alarmed about for our young people. Without having our children develop their communication skills face to face, verbally as well as on the telephone, our future generations will have a gap or breakdown in communication. This communication gap will not only affect our home life, but can also become a problem. However, the technological benefits outweigh the negative effects. Although it can be said that there is a communication gap or a breakdown in some areas that technology has created. It also bridged some of this communication gap. Thanks to technology, it's much easier to stay in touch with friends and family who may be abroad for job transfers, internship opportunities, military purposes, and many other reasons. Although our loved ones or friends are so far away, with the advancement of technology our ability to communicate via email, Skype and even FaceTime has not allowed distance to stop us from maintaining frequent communication with them. Technology has not created a communication gap, but rather has bridged communication. Yes, teens choose to socialize and use Facebook or Instagram, but that wasn't the initial purpose of cell phones. In the book Machines that Become Us the author states: “Many factors influence children's adoption of mobile telephony. An important factor in this is the social network compared to the family, as children mainly use cell phones to contact or be contacted by their family (Katz 296).” Although teenagers tend to use cell phones for socializing, the dominant use is still communication with parents or other family members. It is convenient and much easier to contact a child during the day to convey a message to him via a simple text message. Our world is becoming increasingly busy for our teenagers and cell phones are useful tools for parents to stay in frequent communication with their children