How Social Media is Ruining Our Lives

All throughout the semester we have talked about the growing influence of technology in our lives. It affects our language, our thoughts, our concentration, our classes, everything. It's become an epidemic. While I'm not claiming that I always go technology-free and don't spend hours on social media every week, I do try to take time out of my day to unplug and, to sound completely and utterly cheesy, just live. I like to take breaks from social media so I can be in the world around me, I guess that's been ingrained in me because of my art classes-my art teacher used to drill into us that we have to notice the world around us or we won't be able to create anything. I guess seven years of her telling me that almost everyday of the week really stuck with me.

I was at dinner with my friends the other night when I noticed something that really saddened me-everyone was on their phones. Someone was texting another person, another person was on Facebook, and a couple were on Instagram. It made me feel awkward that I was the only person NOT looking at a phone screen, and I was about to reach for my phone when I decided to do something about it. I put both my elbows on the table (rather hard, so it made a noise to get people's attention) and signed loudly and dramatically. "WOW glad everyone's phone is soooooo much more interesting that hanging out with each other, I think I'm just going to head out now y'all can pick up my check!" Everyone looked up, completely startled because they were so drawn into their phones. Thankfully, my dramatic flair worked and everyone put their phones down for the rest of the night, for the most part. The occasional text was checked, but it wasn't obvious and annoying. It made me really happy that my friends could operate without having to use their phones every 2 seconds, but also really sad that it was an issue in the first place.

Earlier in the semester, we talked about how this was a transition period for technology, but if everyone is so addicted already to their phones, won't it just get worse? Is it bad that I'm so negative about the future and people's personal interactions without the distraction of technology? Ugh, take me back to the 90s where people actually paid attention to each other and technology hadn't taken over yet.