Is face-to-face interaction gone?

Today's young adults exhibit a broad array of characteristics, but many of them share a common technological savvy unseen in previous generations.

While this trait opens them up to a world of new possibilities and perspectives - in some instances fostering a more tolerant and accepting attitude toward others - it also threatens to upend the long-established mode of human connection: face-to-face interaction.

This group, ranging in age from 18 to 35, is part of what Mercer County Job and Family Services Administrator Jason Cupp calls the X-Box generation, named after a popular video game system.

"It's kind of what everybody talks about the current generation having, that immediate gratification, everything at your fingertips - instant communication, a lot of difficulty communicating face-to-face," Cupp said.

Cupp, 47, has been in social services for 25 years. From both his field work and experience as an adjunct instructor at Rhodes State College he's begun to pick up on some key generational differences.

"Just watching the people communicate and reading some of their papers, it seems like we're losing something here - not that they're less intelligent," Cupp said.

Foundations Behavioral Health Director Brian Engle, who's studied behavioral health for four decades, has seen a sea change over the last 10 years in the way technology is shaping young adults.

"We're talking about a generation that has never known a time without smartphones and without social media," he said. "To them it's just a natural thing that everybody has a device. Everybody's communicating with each other, and everybody's on social media. And they're all connected."

Like Cupp, Engle, stressed that technological prowess presents this generation with both advantages and challenges that its predecessors didn't have.

"They can take in so much information and do so much with it in a very short period of time," he said. "But on the flip side, they can also lose interest in things extremely quickly."

Generally speaking, Engle said today's young adults have shorter attention spans, tend to look for instant gratification and are more entitled, but they also appear to be more concerned with the world in which they live and dedicate themselves to environmental and social causes. They're more multicultural and tolerant of different races, ethnic groups, religions, cultures, sexual orientations, same-sex marriages and mixed-raced marriages than their parents.

"I think they are exposed to much through technology," Engle said.

With much human interaction occurring on smartphones, social media and even video games consoles such as X-Box, traditional conversation is replaced by text messaging and emojis. Many younger adults aren't learning how to read body language and react to social cues "because everything is electronic," Cupp said.

Cupp noted he was a bit bewildered when he heard his own son, who was playing a video game downstairs, talking to someone. He was communicating with a friend, using the online multiplayer service.

"So they don't even have to be in the same room to do activities anymore," Cupp bemoaned.

That capability is beneficial during winter storms when people can't leave their homes. It also can keep families and friends living hundreds of miles apart connected by sharing videos and pictures.

But it definitely has its drawbacks, he said.

"Sometimes I think it becomes too easy and you get that loss of face-to-face interaction," he said. "It just seems like that immediate gratification, that shortcut. I think we're losing some critical thinking skills, some decision-making, some conflict resolution learning."

"I think a lot of times we as parents are also very busy," he pointed out. "We're also, especially around my age, not necessarily as technologically advanced as our kids are."

The younger adults may lack emotional intelligence, which has nothing to do with book learning, Cupp said.

"It's about the ability to read people, about the ability to know when you're annoying somebody to stop doing what you're doing," he said. "Picking up on social cues. Basically it's socialization. I see that as starting to decline if we don't go back to the face-to-face interactions."

Without the ability to read people, it becomes easier to be mean to them, Cupp said, "if you don't know that you're hurting them or that your words have daggers to them."

Cupp recalled that in his childhood, players had to work their way through games without the aid of cheat codes and walk-throughs, now widely available online.

That instant gratification mentality can carry over into young adults' life goals, Cupp said.

"I think a lot of times they expect that when they get a job, they're going to rise up the ladder because they're used to playing video games," he said, adding some don't understand it takes years and concerted effort to move beyond an entry-level position to a higher-paying job.

Engle has observed that trend of young, entitled adults quickly leaving jobs when their expectations aren't immediately met.

"We see that some with our younger workers even here at Foundations," he said. "Younger workers don't come here thinking that this is going to be their lifelong career, their lifelong employer. They don't even come here thinking that they're going to stay here five years. They come here and they're looking for opportunities to learn new skills, opportunities to do new things, opportunities for advancement."

If that doesn't happen right away, they move on to find a better place, he said.

The same immediate-gratification mindset applies to building a family, Cupp said.

"Most people want to get married, have a family, have a good job, but I think there's a disconnect between the starting point and achieving that," he said.

Yet the blame doesn't fall solely on video games or computers.

"I don't know whether that's all technology's fault, whether that's us as adults' fault, wanting to make our children's lives easier. It's probably a combination."

Cupp has taken calls about parents slightly neglecting or losing track of their children because they're wrapped up in their technology. He's also seen a rise in parents using social media to find - and invite into their homes - significant others.

"What we're seeing too is them bringing people from outside this area that they don't know, that they've met online and think they know very well, moving them into their house and then that puts their kids at risk as well," he said. "I think some people still are under the illusion that people are honest and aren't going to lie, and unfortunately, that's not always the case."

Engle noted that young adults are likely to build relationships and begin dating through social media.

"You don't have that dating relationship like you had when you actually had to call somebody up, make a date with them, meet them for lunch, get that whole getting-to-know-you part," he said. "Now it's all done through texts and tweets and Facebook."

It's a whole new way of forming and maintaining relationships than previous generations were accustomed to, and as Cupp pointed out, many lack that emotional intelligence. People can project their idealized self without the blemishes.

"You don't have the personal interaction. You don't have the eye contact, that whole nervous time of 'Who are you? Who am I and will we be able to get along?' " Engle said.

Thus, such young adults often miss out on slowly getting to know another person, he said.

"I think the depth of a relationship is probably lacking. It doesn't mean that a good social network, social media relationship can't turn into a healthy long-term personal relationship," he added.

On the financial side, younger adults tend to be fiscally conservative, Engle said.

"You have to look at what they've been through," he explained. "The older ones have been through 9/11, and then they experienced the Great Recession. They saw layoffs. They saw foreclosures of homes."

According to Young Invincibles, a national organization advocating expanded economic opportunity for young adults, millennials have earned a net wealth half that of boomers at the same age.

The group also notes that young adult workers today earn $10,000 less than young adults in 1989, a decline of 20 percent.

"They're less optimistic and certainly more realistic and probably more anxious about the future," Engle said.

Some teens on the cusp of adulthood, though, are having fewer pregnancies and dabbling less in substance abuse, Engle said.

"Maybe they're tired of all of the problems of the previous generations and are thinking - maybe not individually, but collectively - 'we've got to do something different. This doesn't seem to be working very well,' " Engle said.

But when talking about the younger adult generation, both Cupp and Engle point to what were considered the newfangled menaces of their times and eras.

"I feel old talking about this because I just think about the people in the '50s saying rock 'n' roll is going to be the death of everybody and now it's something else," Cupp said.

Engle echoed similar sentiments.

"I think that every generation has its own characteristics and is generally looked upon negatively by the 'old folks.' 'What's this world coming to?' " he said. "This was true of my generation, when guys had long hair, lots of pot got smoked and lots of love was made. But my generation turned out OK, as have generations before and after mine. Of course the world is changing, and technology has a huge influence on the lives of adolescents and young adults, but that doesn't mean that it's all bad …. just different."