It has long been said that chivalry is dead. Well, if chivalry is dead, then technology killed it.

With our tech devices permanently on hand – and I’m just as guilty as the next person – we have pummeled chivalry to the point of extinction. Why call when we can text? Why send a letter, or even an e-mail for that matter, when we can simply write a couple sentences on someone’s wall?

Convenience will always trump courtesy, and relationships now end via text, though they could have just as easily begun the same way.

Romantic traditions like throwing rocks at a girl’s window have been replaced by slightly less extravagant gestures like the Facebook poke.

If I can’t muster up the courage to go talk to a girl, all I need to do is find out her name. With that, I can retreat to Facebook and leaf through her pictures to make sure she truly looks the way I first saw her. I can read through her interests and eye a few of her statuses, just to make sure she doesn’t have an unhealthy obsession with cats.

As opposed to getting to know someone the old fashioned way, we have a convenient page that gives us a constantly updated cheat sheet. It sounds creepy now that you think about it, doesn’t it?

Even something far more casual, the booty call for instance, has been forever changed by technology.

Picture this. A guy strikes out at a bar, but yearns for a woman to numb the pain of rejection. What does he do? It’s simple, really. To err on the side of caution, he texts every girl on his contact list. I know what you’re thinking – that doesn’t sound like booty calling; it sounds like a fishing trip. But you have to ask yourself: What’s stopping him?

You can’t blame him for utilizing the tools at his disposal.

Sure, it can be argued that chivalry is overrated. Maybe it’s an outdated and overblown ideal, but I’d like to think differently. And all courtesy aside, I think we should all seriously consider putting the phone down and choosing another route.

Let’s say I wanted to ask a girl out, so I text her. She receives the text, reads it over, and now she has time to think about it. She has time to consult friends and get distracted by anything around her. But if I ask her in person, she would be forced to go with her gut reaction. There would be no “phone a friend” option. It would just be her and me, and that’s the way it should be.

All I know is, when I tell my children someday about how their mother and I met, I don’t want it to involve the words “friend request” or “PIN number.”