这是一篇阅读理解文章：

Why do we go out our ways to avoid people ?

Do you think meeting new people is a waste of time ? Or are we just lazy, thinking that meeting someone new really is a trouble ?

Communciation is the key to life. We have been told that many times. Take the past generations, like our parents, for example. They seem to take full advantage of that whole

"communication" idea because they grew up talking face to face while Generation Y grew up staring at screens. We spend hours of our days sitting on Facebook.

We send messages to our friends and think about all of the things we want to say to certain people that we don't have the courage to actually do in reality.

Nowadays, we are so caught up in our little circle of friends - our comfort zone. We love it because the friends in it laugh at our jokes, understand our feelings and can read our minds.

Most importantly, they know when we want to be alone. They just get us.

Holding a conversation with someone new means agreeing with things that you don’t actually believe and being someone you think they want you to be — it is, as I said before, a trouble.

It takes up so much energy, and at some point or another, it is too tiring.

请教语法网的专家老师们：

1）上述文字中，ways错误，应为way？

2）从上下文看，2个过去时grew是否错误，要改成完成时 they have grown up 和 Generation Y have grown up ？

3）上段文字中，是as I said before 还是应该是 as I have said before 呢？这里，究竟哪个正确？

     如果是as I said before - before怎么可以和“过去时”连用呢？

非常感谢！