Electronic Communication

As I was graduating High School - the whole Instant Messenger thing was getting big. When I got to college I tried several times to make use of this 'important' development in personal communication. But everytime I was 'IM-ing' someone - I would get totally annoyed and call them after 30 seconds - the whole thing seemed so inefficient to me.

Flash forward to law school - I just realized that an extremely large portion of my human interaction/communication takes place without any tangible contact with the other person, no sight/voice/sound. I now text message people, e-mail constantly, blog, and just realized that I carried on a mini-conversation in the comments section of a blog post.

Indeed, down the rabbit hole I have gone......but I wonder, did electronic communication get more efficient or has the use of this communication reached such critical mass in our society, that not using it leaves you behind?