Every day I walk my dogs in a beautiful park near my house. It’s in the city, but there are areas of the park that make you feel like you are out in the country. It’s secluded, quiet, green and peaceful. Until some idiot comes along talking on their headset, smart phone in hand, poor neglected dog by their side, unaware that they are missing their only opportunity to enjoy a perfectly serene moment in an otherwise chaotic, stressful day.

Technology makes us smarter and also dumber. It makes our lives easier and also much more complicated. It frees us and also makes us slaves. It allows us to be everywhere but present.

The 2013 Gallup State of the American Workplace Report found that only 30 percent of employees said they were engaged and inspired at work. Out of 150,000 full and part-time workers surveyed, more than half said they were not very excited at work, and 18 percent said they were actively disengaged, or in the words of Gallup CEO Jim Clifton, they “roam the halls spreading discontent.”

Now, I love my iPhone as much as the next guy, and I have no idea how I survived so long without the ESPN Score Center app, but I don’t think it’s a huge leap to connect the fact that the more we connect to technology the more we disconnect from the people we should be relating to every day. While technology has opened up our world, it has also confined us to a world devoid of human interaction. A world where employees never leave work.

Public relations by definition depends on relationships. If we lose our ability to relate, to develop relationships, to have conversations with other humans, then don’t we also lose our ability to communicate? If we never disconnect from work and enjoy some down time, is it any wonder so many of us are disengaged at work, roaming the halls spreading discontent?

As I pass those people in the park with smart phone in hand, I imagine their dogs are telepathically communicating an important message on my behalf: “Put down your phone. Put it down now and no one gets hurt! Put it down now of that guy over there with the Mets hat is going to come over here and slap you silly.”