Millennials like to text. If you want to stay connected with them, then you’ll need to text them back. Not only do they love to text, they have their own language around texting.

But texting isn’t natural for many of us who didn’t grow up with a smartphone attached to our palms. If you came up during the time when you still received letters and notes in the mail, then texting often seems impersonal at best, maybe even jarring.

I have hundreds of emails between Mark and me. Every birthday, I’d send him a long note with stories about his birth. We bantered about basketball and baseball. We discussed politics. And on his first walk and the final one, I sent him a note every day via email.

Email shares similarities to letter-writing. I say that because it allows me to think in a conversational way, and my emails usually tend toward that kind of flow. I can ruminate while I write, much like people do when they speak in-person.

While this is anecdotal at best, I find many millennials and younger people struggling to communicate face-to-face. It’s hard to have a conversation with them sometimes. There’s a vulnerability about human-flavored communication that’s very different than the digital kind.

Gold star for robot boy.

We’re being channeled to ask Alexa all of our questions. Anytime I interact with a digital assistant like her, it feels like I’m dealing with a robot, or something less than human.

Often, when I talk to people who grew up with technology as their first language, conversation with them simulates some of those same Alexa-like elements.

Alexa, send me a million dollars.