Social by: Luke Simmons

In the world that we live in today, people live their entire lives through their devices. Whether its through Instagram and Snapchat on their phones or YouTube and Netflix on their laptops, people seem to fully indulge themselves in their technology to the point where they start to ignore the world around them. If I'm being honest, I should stop saying "their" and "them" as if it was a group that I am not a part of, because I myself and guilty of living through my phone a lot of the time. Its hard not to for our generation, because from the time we were little we were constantly around technology. Whether it was our Wii's or DS's that we used to dominate in Mario Kart, or a parent's iPad that we played Jetpack Joyride and Subway Surfers on in elementary school, technology was constantly finding its way into our lives no matter where or what we were doing.

At the current time, most people of my generation use technology all of the time for every type of task. Whether it is submitting school work, playing games, or talking with friends, we all use our devices for everything. This is what makes technology so amazing. The fact that we can connect with the world around us and access any information right at our fingertips is an amazing technological advancement. We can communicate with everyone no matter where we are through the numerous messaging apps like Snapchat and Messenger. We can share the amazing meal we had with all of our friends through Facebook and Instagram. We can learn a language through Duolingo, or maybe play a game of Clash Royale. The sheer amount of things that we have access through the tiny devices that we call our cell phones is extraordinary, and should not be taken for granted. Growing up and continuing to use these technologies has taught our generation to accept and integrate technology into our daily lives, which has led to the problem that we are faced with today.
The problem is that people use their technology as a way to live their lives, rather than a tool to enhance them. What I mean by this is that instead of people using Snapchat to talk to their real friends from school after they have gone home, people use it to start friendships and live friendships solely through technology. Since people are given all of the great things that come as a part of technology, they believe that it is acceptable to use each of the tools by themselves rather than to just add to their lives as they were designed. In other words, certain messaging apps were designed to be used to keep in contact with those that we couldn't get to in person, yet people now use it to make friends rather than talking to people in the real world. It is the same for everything else, such as Instagram where people post happy selfies and pictures of themselves in order to get the most likes, rather than sharing experiences in real life to get real life reactions. Technology is controlling people's lives, and people are simply allowing it to do so.
This is a major problem and current event, and if I'm being honest, I don't know how to fix it. I don't know if there is any way to make people live their lives in the real world rather than through technology, and there quite honestly may not be a way. Although this sounds very negative, I encourage people to take action, and to make sure that they live experiences and make memories through real life experiences rather than through virtual apps and websites. I think that alone could make the world a much better and much more real place.