Phones are everywhere in society today, especially in the hands of younger generations. Among streaming services, games and simple access to the internet, social media is one of the staples making phones a necessity in today’s world.

Unfortunately, phones can limit our interactions and interpersonal skills. Being on your phone in public can often irk someone into telling you to put it down and actually talk to people.

But phones don’t distance us from reality, they keep us more connected than ever.

Despite popular opinion, phones don’t deter younger generations from face-to-face communication. Instead, they encourage it and introduce the younger generations to new forms they’ll use later in life. But this newfound connectivity needs to be handled appropriately.

“More people communicate over social media and email,” said Isabella Sarkies, a second year public relations major. “Businesses use social media to communicate with others so I need to know how to use it formally.”

Communication is one of the most popular majors at WSU. It focuses on communicating with others and various media sources. An industry online makes this major possible and allows student to develop new forms of communication.

Albert Bandura, a psychology professor at Stanford University, explained with his Social Cognitive Theory of Mass Communication how mass media carries a lot of social importance.

Bandura shows with the theory how online communication legitimizes new practices, and allows members to participate in a new type of community setting.

Our voices on social media allow us to connect to a greater audience and voice opinions we normally wouldn’t be able to.

We take pictures of food, pets and ourselves a dozen times a day, and while we do it for ourselves, we do it to contribute to a larger community as well.

Our own university uses social media to communicate to the students, which informs the student body but also lets us give our opinions on the posts, for the rest of the student body to see.

The WSU Student Entertainment Board even has an Instagram. This use of social media is what allows us to come together, step away from screens and interact face to face.

“Social media helps us say what is on our minds and allows us to get feedback from a much larger audience,” Sarkies said.

Phone usage can be hard to handle in certain situations. Though they connect us to others, they can separate us as well. We need to understand this balance for their proper use.

Phone usage should be taught in WSU classes and workshops and at younger ages. This would allow us to know exactly how to use this technology in order to benefit our communication, rather than being absorbed by it.