Okay, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to look down at the ticking time-bomb in our hands. The mobile phone. Yes, it's the only reason we escape the boredom, and yes, it does occasionally show us cute pictures of puppies, but we also forget how toxic our culture has become with the attachment to phones. Texting has become a nightmare, and it is no exaggeration to say that it is the reason for the decline of so many relationships. Not to sound like your grumpy grandma, but technology and texting culture is killing our human connections.

Here are some reasons why...

We expect to be talking all the time, even when we don't really need it.

This is a tough one because it is reflective of the whole culture of conversation changing in the last few years. We know that everyone is on their phones all the time and will likely have their phones on their person at every moment of the day. Be it the phone itself, a fancy watch, a laptop or computer, iPad or Kindle, or whatever – we have access to people in a thousand different ways. Therefore, we expect that we can contact them at all times. And when they don't always have the chance or energy to reply to us, it creates this unnecessarily needy culture of ever having to be talking to your special person.

But it doesn't work like that, not in real life. Even people in long-distance relationships don't need to talk to their partner every day and all day because then you have nothing left to say when you do meet, or by that point, it's just small talk. You need to be selective with your time and use of technology. Otherwise, it ends up substituting the quality of your physical time together without you realizing it.

You deserve better than that

Maybe talk to your friends instead, or better yet, see them in person. Mostly, texting should be used as a means of arranging more human contact and dates to forge intimacy, not as a replacement for it. Texting becomes a nightmare if it's the first and last thing you do in a day. If your life revolves around receiving a 'good morning' and 'good night' text, something is wrong. It may seem like a good form of attention and affection, but really it's just something that you train a person to do – it's a bit of a performance, if I'm honest. We can't get stuck in a trap of letting texting convince us that the bare minimum gestures are actually romantic or signs of loyalty.

It causes paranoia – just because we have the means to track people through 'find my friend' or snap maps doesn't mean that it's a remotely healthy thing to do. Be warned, friends – this is a slippery slope to more worrying control issues and blurred boundaries in the latter stages of the relationship. Phones give the relationship more reasons to fail – you can track their location, see who they follow on Instagram, who they are talking to at the same time as going out with you. They are valid things to worry about if you haven't discussed the boundaries or if your partner is not on the same page as you. Still, it's a nightmare for new relationships and will often cause stress and anxiety and ultimately will kill the relationship if you don't establish boundaries.

It means that you can easily prioritize your phone over the person

You can entirely substitute the emotions of a relationship by trying to make up a fight over an affectionate facebook tag, or cancel plans last minute by text, even though you are publically on Instagram all evening. It gives more ways to hurt one another and expose liars. Granted, liars are not good for relationships anyway, but often it can cause people to become obsessed with the internet value of a relationship rather than checking in to see if the person is actually happy.

You know the story, smiling couply insta pics hide a multitude of sins. What a nightmare.