This is a message to not just the friends, coworkers and other acquaintances that have the privilege of being added to my phone’s Contact Book—nay, this is a message to all millennials.

Text me back… no, seriously.

You’re irking me—chances are you may be irking a lot of people. Yes. You. Not your roommate, not that person glancing at you from across the restaurant while you eat your food with Mom and Dad—you.

Unlike some of you: I didn’t decide to go abroad over the winter break. Whether I couldn’t afford it, or if I was too busy, or if I just didn’t want to build septic tanks in a third world country, is entirely my business. Nor is it the point right now. The point is that I’m stuck on a notoriously long winter break with not too much to do.

So any suggestions of what I could do to kill the time from when I wake up to when I go back to sleep?

Netflix? Wow—what an idea! Nobody aged ten to fifty has ever thought of that! For those of you who aren’t overtly skilled at picking up emotion from online articles like this one… I’m being sarcastic!

In exactly three-and-a-half weeks, I solitarily binged my way through seven seasons of "Mad Men." I followed sporadically throughout the next two weeks with two seasons of "American Dad." I’ve reran enough episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" that it’s no longer adorable—which is an absolute crime.

You’ve made me do this. You made me lose my love for poor Ted. You know why I blame you?

You have never texted me back… no seriously, I’m blaming you for this.

Well surely it can’t be your fault, right? I mean… You’re unfaultable! You have an excuse—something you say I lack for being so bored!

Oh really? What should I do instead than text my friends?

Get a job? All I have near my house is Target. Let me drop some knowledge on you, ladies and gentlemen: Target only hires part-time people for a minimum of 60 days. That’s two months, folks. Time that—although my break is about a month and some change—I still lack.

Not to mention: who wants to work minimum wage over the busiest day of the year? Furthermore, for those of you who don’t know, Lafayette College students get released for a longer break than most other colleges—later than most other colleges, too.

All my friends back home have already returned to their respective colleges, my sister is back in high school, my parents are both at work, and what am I to do alone at home?

I think to myself, “Hey, Ethan. You have lots of friends! Surely somebody is as bored as you and in need of some companionship!”

So I text you. And you. And you. And you.

In my defense, it’s not like I was being annoying. I didn’t send a text every other minute.

I get up around 9 o’clock each morning, work out, shower, and eat breakfast by 10:45. So when I text people around noon or later, I would think they’re up and about, too.

Not a single person texts back. What’s your excuse, huh?

You have a job at Wal-Mart, five days a week, during the middle of the day mostly? I get it. You can’t text then, and some days you come back after a long shift and don’t want to talk to anybody. Sure!

But you have weekends off, and so do I.

You’re spending a day at lunch with your dad, who you hardly see because he’s working to put you and you’re three other siblings through grad school? Enjoy your time! Family is the most important thing after all. Spend all day throwing a football or watching all seven episodes of Star Wars.

But your dad has to go back to work eventually.

You’re caught in a blizzard and the cellphone tower got torn down by Biblical winds—and frogs are falling from the freaking skies?! Hey, sometimes acts of God happen to everybody. That’s the mystery of higher powers: nobody sees them coming.

But just like the Persian poets used to say: “This too shall pass.”

Text me back… no, seriously. Some folks have a legit excuse, but a lot of people don’t—and it’s not just over break that I’ve been noticing this.

There is just this trend with 20-somethings where we don’t text back people. Who knows why we do it; who knows the true culprit? Laziness? Urgencies? Accidents? Bitterness? Ignorance? Bad signals?

I love each of my friends, and I know that they’re just like anybody else’s friends. They make me laugh, they challenge me to be a better person, they teach me, they respect me, and they love me. And I do the same for them! I’m sure people don’t have some secret vendetta against just me for some reasons nobody could fathom. (Huh... my life would be like something out of "Pretty Little Liars"...)

But consider this for a minute, dear reader: what if there was an emergency? What if I was in a "Taken"-like situation, and being hunted by kidnappers, all I could do was send a text?

"Hey. Have you got a sec? I need some help?"

Would my friends, without understanding the context of my dire situation, blatantly choose to ignore my message? Would they think I was kidding, or that I wasn’t truly in danger, or that I could handle it? Would people still choose to ignore their vibrating phone? Would some even flick on “Do Not Disturb” because they were too busy relishing that last sip of coffee; rather, would they try to pluck out of a chord on a guitar they’ve never touched, or finish that last thirty seconds of their sprint? Do you really need to finish another set?

Everybody is guilty of doing this at one time or another. Whether we ignore our parents when we're out with friends, or if we are busy on a date and ignore even our friends' questions about how the night is going. I know I'm just as guilty as anyone. But are we so focused in this generation of self-aggrandizing that we disqualify ourselves from sharing in intimate moments with friends and family? Are we so busy trying to love time with ourselves constantly that we forget to enjoy the times with others?

Maybe this is all an overreaction. Or maybe this is one man now noticing the ever-growing distance between millennials because of the ever-encroaching embrace of technology in our daily lives? I’d love to hear my friends’ thoughts on this… So…

Text me back… no, seriously.