• by Fern Siegel , May 1, 2009

Cell phones. Texting. Email. Social networks. There are many ways to avoid confrontation - and all of them technical. For Gen Y, learning to seduce face-to-face may be a bigger challenge than deciding to vote. Yes, technology is a blessing. We stay in touch quickly and effortlessly. But it also condones the worst sin: boredom. How else can you justify 500 Facebook "friends" sharing every banal, insignificant detail of their lives? If the average blogger invested as much time in an actual relationship - or recycling - we might have a cleaner, more connected planet.

Since we don't, expect the next hot profession to be intimacy counselor.

In the new film "He's Just Not That Into You," one 30-something whines that she endures rejection in several mediums. Mobile communication is capable of many things - but charm? Enticement? I love email, but it's easy to be misunderstood. Humor can be misread as sarcasm, while a one-line response is construed as anger.

Often, people wax idiotic in messages. "Long 2 C U" is not the same as Bette Davis' snappy comeback to a suitor: "I'd kiss you, but I just washed my hair." When Lauren Bacall wanted to get Bogart's attention in "To Have and Have Not," she didn't wait for him to make the first move. She shimmied up to his room and purred: "If you want me, just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow." (Every man, woman and bird in a five-mile radius was whistling after she shut the door.)

By contrast, it's sometimes tough to gage genuine feelings in email. Emoticons? That's for the emotionally challenged. As The New Yorker cartoon of a posting pooch noted, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog."

Apparently, Dentyne agrees. The gum king has used the talk-challenged e-revolution as a twist on its print ads, which push for face time. One spot features friends intertwined on a couch. The tagline is "original instant message," but the visual looks more like a group grope. My favorite: the couple in a lip-lock on the grass. The copy reads: "send and receive." Expect a bundle in nine months. Perhaps Dentyne should team up with a condom maker. First the smile, then the style - you can't get more intimate than that.