360 Degrees: Is technology damaging to relationships?

  I first pondered this question when writing my Sophie's World essay. Is technology damaging to relationships? To be more specific, are social media, the Internet, and the phone making relationships worse. Well, it'd be best to consider all sides to this complicated question, a true 360 degree look.
  I'll start with the basic "yes", technology is damaging relationships. I'll consider this the viewpoint of many older generations. Facebook allows you to talk to someone without talking, to avoid close intimate contact necessary for building skills useful to creating healthy relationships. To us young ones it takes away experience that helps us create relationships when we are older. How? Rather than hang out with a friend, I can just use Xbox live to play my friends from the comfort of my home. I could talk to them over the headset that comes with my Xbox. I lose experience in how to deal with awkward situations, since they can be avoided by the use of the Internet or the text.
  But with a turn of 90 degrees (a half turn), we come to the "yes, and no" response. In other words, maybe technology is damaging if used as a complete replacement for face-to-face communication, but in moderation isn't damaging. Heck, isn't it helpful to just text someone "what's the hwk" instead of calling him up and going through all the "Hi, okay how are you, really?" formalities? It isn't hurting the relationship unless I never ever talk to that person face-to-face again.
  How about a 180 degree flip? This would be the "no" viewpoint, probably held by many younger generations. Technology simply makes everything easier. I can talk to people even if they are far away, like in Colorado or Canada. I don't have to waste time calling someone or stopping by his house. I can ask questions that might come off sounding badly were I to need to articulate them.
  Let's take another half turn to 270 degrees, the "no, and yes" response. Technology is not harmful to relationships, but it can be if you use it incorrectly. For example, if you text someone when an email would be better, or maybe you Facebook message someone when a Skype call would be better, you could really make a relationship face unnecessary challenges. It's not the ingeniously built 21st century technology that's causing your girlfriend to dump you, it's your failed use of it.
  But no one of these views is right. A full 360 degree, all encompassing, view at the question is needed. By taking in all stops around the circle a more perfect circle can be drawn. So I'll start with the 90 degree view. Yes technology is damaging, but it doesn't have to be. While the new age is reading an email, not a letter, if we turn into a solely electronic society, as we are, the tangible is lost. You can't touch an email, hold it in your hands, trace the letters. With the use of email, you lose sight of the person who sent the email, focusing instead on the email itself.
  I'm not saying you shouldn't write emails. But, in order to avoid the death of the relationship due to technology, and instead experience the rebirth and strengthening of the relationship due to technology, it is necessary to take a step back every one in a while. Think of who sent that email, message, text; think of who is on the other end of the video and maybe every once in a while visit him/her.