The other day I had a conversation with my friend, Jeff.

He went into a monologue in the beginning that I found not only highly entertaining, but extremely truthful in so many ways about the way our modern culture is conducting ourselves when it comes down to business and personal relationships.

Instead of picking up the phone and saying hey, how are things and actually hearing somebody talk for five minutes, connecting that way, we’ve actually trained ourselves not to ever pick up the phone.

Here are the three reasons why picking up the phone is actually better for you:

1. In textland, everything is perfect (if you think about it)

For those of you that have dated on Tinder, or Bumble, or any other dating apps, whenever you meet someone for the very, very first time, you say, hey, what’s new, how was you weekend, how is your week going. Everybody says fantastic.

The whole world has been trained to be so positive via text.

Everything is always fantastic via text, fantastic, unbelievable, having the best day ever.

The texts are endless that way. Because in reality, we’re so disconnected from one another that we’re hiding behind our phones.

Most of you don’t even realize that the phone actually can call people. And when it rings, it actually sends shivers down your spine. You’re wondering, what is that? You don’t even know where the answer button is.

Which leads us to:

2. Everything is not fantastic, and we’re missing human interaction

Just getting on the phone with somebody you haven’t spoken to in a while and asking them how they are can actually give them the uplifting moment that they need.

If you say how you are via text, as we all know, everybody says fantastic. But if you get on the phone with somebody, the truth comes out. And the fact of the matter is, no one really wants to vomit words on a screen because it literally takes five minutes to write this long text out unless your a masterful texter and you’re a great typist. If you think about the amount of time it takes to actually text the message, you could have been on the phone actually having a solution and a conversation.

Which leads us to:

3. I’m sorry, but texting is not a place to have intimate conversations at all, at all.

You can’t hear somebody’s voice, you can’t hear what they’re really feeling. Words can be misinterpreted, things are skipped over, you’re multitasking beyond belief, and you’re not paying full on attention. To get on a phone call and actually talk for five minutes can actually save somebody’s day. We’re not all fucking fantastic all the time. As a matter of fact, we’re human beings. We’re really just going through life on a daily basis, looking to connect, and we’re not picking up the phone and connecting.

We need each other. I know when I’m going through something, if I didn’t have my friends to talk to I don’t know what I would do, because I certainly would not feel better by just texting.

I’ve got some friends that just text only. And I’ve got to tell you something, it’s so frustrating to sit there and to stare at the piece of glass, and to write this long ass text, or long e-mail, or long message, it’s just painful. We have friendships and relationships now that are just textual. That’s not a friendship at all, that’s just convenience, that’s just being lazy, and that’s not really giving shit about somebody else. You can’t possibly give a shit about somebody that you just get into a text relationship with. It doesn’t work that way because we need one another. We need one another to connect, we need one another to hang out, we need each other to talk.

Look, I’m guilty of this. There are some times when I’m dating, I don’t really want to talk to somebody, I’d rather because face to face. But you know what, just to get on the phone and talk for 10 minutes is a nice thing when you’re driving. Start talking to some people again and you’ll start getting more fulfilled, and you’ll actually stop hiding behind the text, the glass, the screens, the Facebook, and you’ll start actually doing the face to face and the phone to phone conversations that we all need to survive as a race.

We’ve become textual zombies, and it’s becoming very unhealthy.