I can’t help but notice and I’m sure you have too, that more people prefer to write an email rather than pick up the phone these days. You’ve also probably noticed that social networks and communications sites have inundated the web in a big way. How big? Social Media has overtaken email as the most popular activity on the internet (over 17% of all web usage)!

That’s exciting – all these new discoveries and fun tools at our disposal, and even more on the way. But what does it mean for our in-person interactions?

This is so perfect!

When I was at the Web 2.0 Expo, I wasn’t surprised to see many heads down during the various seminars. Everyone was sending out tweets at a furious pace, blogging their findings and opinions, updating their statuses to reflect their exact position – it was all very cool. However, when it came to face-to-face interaction I only met two or three people that were open to chatting for a few minutes. Now, something doesn’t seem right about that. (No, I didn’t smell and my hair looked fine, so it wasn’t me…at least I don’t think.)

Folks would rather sit next to each other and text than turn their heads a degree to say hello. It’s weird and it’s kind of scary. Parties have become tweetups, client meetings have been digitized and personal relationships are made official, become complicated or end with the click of a button.

If this is the situation now, then what can we expect one, five or ten years from now? I miss the days when you could sit a table in a coffee shop and have conversations with the people around you. Now when I do that I’m just the crazy lady who talks to herself – I have to pretend like I was just answering a phone call. So tragic.

Can Social Media and our social lives find a peace between them? Can they be used for the greater good? Or are we doomed to live in a future world of tweet talk and Facebook face time?