Recently I was graced with the insight — thanks to a friend who read Cosmo or Maxim or some other useless magazine — that 52 percent of people under the age of 35 think dumping someone via text message is OK.

Dumping people by text is one of the most lame, cowardly and idiotic methods of ending it I can think of. And people believe this is OK? Ugh.

Another wonderful friend was busy touting the marvels of meeting “nice” men online — the kind she “knew” wouldn’t be like the jerks she meets time and again at parties.

Sure, having categories to sort potential beaus into might make dating easier, but those people are just putting their best side forward. You can’t get a true read on people until you actually meet them. Besides, whatever you learn about them online can be gleaned from five minutes of actual conversation.

I shouldn’t act so surprised. Contemporary American daters are so scared of person-to-person interaction that they’d rather sit and text for minutes on end at bars, clubs and house parties then talk to the person next to them. They speak more online with people they hardly know on Facebook or Chatroulette then they converse with the people they come across in real life.

Yes, social media is the way of the future. It is a boon to the entire world — but one that has little place in dating.

“But wait,” the Internet-dating masses say, “I met my girlfriend/boyfriend/booty-call buddy while using X-Date and we are now happily married with 2.5 kids.”

Yeppers, those sites are fine crutches for people who are too afraid to go out and run the risks of human interaction. Sure, you might be able to meet someone who has similar interests or fetishes, but what about the majority — those who searched in vain for a soul mate, or those who ended up dumped?

This argument can go on for hours and hours. I’ve had it at more bars and parties than I care to count, but the bottom line is as follows: Text breakups, Internet pickups and perpetual texting are making the dating population of America into a bunch of socially-awkward introverts.

The conversations conducted via text are lackluster at best, as well as being difficult to read into. Often, the same message has to be reiterated again and again to tease out its subtext.

Online introductions are nothing more than staged events, akin to the photo ops that accompany presidential speeches.

The secret to meeting your future friend, lover, or heartbreaker is real-life interaction. The rush of skirting rejection, the thrill of uncertainty, that moment when you wait, breath baited, for a response to your last come-on — all this is what makes dating worthwhile.

When you dump someone with a text, neither party learns anything. Both parties are likely to make the same mistakes with whomever else they meet. They’ll continue to fail.

When you meet someone online, build a relationship, then finally meet in person, you have cheated yourself of many of the intricate details of human interaction that make a relaionship meaningful.

When you text at a party rather than talking, you send mixed messages worse than someone saying “yes” while shaking his head. If you don’t want to talk to people around you, move or leave. If you have to answer a text from a friend, tell him or her to come meet you. However you reply, make it brief.

If you’re determined to avoid human interaction, stop trying to set it up. Just buy yourself a vibrator or fleshlight for those lonely nights, and whenever you actually want human contact, hang out with the friends you’ve already made.

But if you want to really understand the rush of love or lust that you have read about in Shakespeare or seen in oh-so-many chick flicks, then go out and let the chips fall where they may. You might fail, you might succeed, but you will have an experience that no online chat could ever equal.

Save the texting for when you absolutely cannot speak in person. If you have something meaningful to say, do it in person. Communicating via type alone can be fulfilling — reading is a fantastic pastime — but it lacks too many of the elements that make being with people so great. It’s no way to play the mad, mad game of dating.