I lost two valued friends this year, and while I certainly take responsibility, it takes two to destroy a friendship. But I attribute the loss of both in part to the increasing reliance many people have on social media platforms like texting and Facebook Messenger, and the decline of many people’s willingness to speak to other people in real time, even on the phone. I rarely blame technology for the ills of people, but these were especially painful occurrences for me, a human and technological failure combined, and I am trying, months later, to understand.

Many people have actually forgotten how to talk to other people, there are now people in the world who have never learned to do it.

In his encyclical on climate change, Pope Francis wrote eloquently about the effects of technological innovation on employment, social exclusion, social break down, increased violence and a rise in new forms of social aggression. When media and the digital world become omnipresent, their influence can stop people from learning how to live wisely, to think deeply and to love generously. In this context, the great sages of the past run the risk of going unheard amid the noise and distractions of an information overload.

When people are in conflict with one another, I have come to see that texting and programs like Facebook Messenger are toxic methods of trying to communicate and work through problems. Reading short passages in bursts are not the same thing as talking in real time, listening to voices, grasping nuance and meaning. People who want to resolve problems, who care about the people they are struggling with, will seek to speak to them or, better yet,  look them in the eye if it is possible.

Of course they will. If they can’t bother to do that, then they don’t really care.

Social media platforms are a place to hide, a way not to understand, a form of social aggression all their own. In one case, a man I have known for years took offense at something political I wrote, or that he thought I was writing. I rarely write about politics, I hate the labeling of all thoughts into a left or right. My friend is a passionate follower of talks shows and cable news, he identifies himself a follower of the “right” he was offended by a sentence I wrote that was sympathetic to Planned Parenthood. ( I am sympathetic to Planned Parenthood, I know so many women who have been helped by it.)

My friend – we worked together on a newspaper a long time ago –  sent me a long and angry text, and I responded by urging him to call me and talk about his anger. He didn’t, he sent another text even angrier than the first, and I got angry and responded that this was not a way to communicate with friends. In a series of exchanges – none of them about the issue – our friendship of  nearly 30 years disintegrated right before my eyes, and on a screen, and without a phone call or cup of coffee.

He was angry, and didn’t want to deal with his anger, only with my transgression and his sense of victimization. I told him at least five times that Facebook Messenger was not a place to resolve this, I told him I never argue about politics, I’d prefer to take rat poison with my tea. I’m sure we had differences, I said, it doesn’t matter to me if he agrees with me or not, or if I agree with him. I have known him for a long time and respect and appreciate him and the work he does, he is a journalist.

I used to think that this was a problem men had, but online, I actually see much more hostility and aggression coming from women. I’ve had to ban a score of people in the years I have been writing on Facebook, all but one are female. That is a surprise and disappointment to me.

I lost another friend a few months later. I noticed on my Facebook Page that someone I had known and admired for years was putting up comments that seemed increasingly agitated and pointed to me, it was almost as if everything I was writing was annoying or offending her. I wrote a message suggesting we talk, it seemed we had a problem. But, I said, I would not try to resolve this on Facebook Messenger or social media. We had to talk on the phone, she lived far from me.

I received several angry messages from her, including one that said we could only talk if I would be honest, and I wasn’t sure what this meant and asked again if we couldn’t speak to one another directly. I can’t honestly say what happened, except what followed was one of the most painful episodes in my time online, there were a series of increasingly angry and outraged messages – some from her, some from me – and I saw a relationship of years vanish into the digital ether. Again, I had this sense of losing control, of being pulled along by something dark inside of me.

The truth is I don’t know what happened, and will never know. Perhaps it was all my fault. I have a temper, when assaulted, I can get plenty angry. My sense of it was that the messages she sent me were offensive and completely out of any proportion to the issues between us, although I couldn’t even tell you what they were. It became clear to me that she didn’t want to speak to me, didn’t want to resolve any issues that might have arisen between us. I couldn’t even say what they might have been.

Our messages seemed to take on a life of their own, spiraling back and forth with injury and accusation. She called me a liar, suggested I need help because I had no friends and couldn’t make any, I knew I needed to stop this cycle, and I believe I tried – we all see through our own prism – but it was as if we were locked in some demonic ritual beyond our awareness or ability to control. No matter how many times I said we shouldn’t be talking this way, we were. Why couldn’t I stop? Because messaging can be an addiction, a destabilizing act of social aggression. Just look at the posts online. I am horrified to see that I am not immune to it, none of us are immune to addiction and the miscommunications that epidemically occur when we see only text, and have no other context in which to understand what is being said or why.

Two friends are enough for me to sacrifice to this cultural laziness and disorder. No wonder the country is so angry. By the time cable news and social media are done with us, we will have lost the ability to empathize, listen or resolve anything. That sees to already be happening.

I practically begged my friend to talk with me, we had never had any conflict, we always respected and admired each other, it didn’t seem we were actually arguing about anything. It seemed almost Orwellian to me, it was not rational. But the anger became the means and the end, expressing anger and victimization, outrage and injury, that was the point, that is what killed two friendships.

This was especially painful for me, I value friendships and there is very rarely this kind of conflict or anger in my personal life. I value directness, in me and others. I am quite certain if I had been sitting face-to-face with either of these people, we could have handled these issues in seconds.

I have learned this lesson, this round hurt enough and startled me enough that I have begun to understand what happened. I failed my own resolve. I was right the first time. We never should have tried to resolve a complex emotional issue over a social media messaging program. Facebook says it is about connection, but as Francis said, used unknowingly, it can be even more effective at disconnection.

I understand now that once anger injects itself into a message, I must stop. And mean it. I don’t need the last word, I am happy to give it away.  To insist that we either stop talking or really talk.  Online, all kinds of communication are now so ubiquitously new and simple. It has never been easier to make a connection, it has never been easier to lose one.