I pulled my phone out long enough to check that the last bus to drive me back to campus left five minutes ago. Oops. I shrugged, put my phone back, and knew that somehow my friends and I would make it home. We always did. So my friends and I just kept dancing to the "Uptown Funk" remix the DJ had played for third time now, but somehow each time it kept getting better. My hands were waving in the air, as my throat was growing coarse over singing along with everyone else. The beat of the music makes the walls vibrate, or was that because everyone was dancing? Either way I knew that this frat party was one that would be hard to forget. I closed my eyes and kept dancing, until suddenly there was this bright light that kept shining in my direction. I squinted my eyes open, thinking it was some sort of new strobe light, but nope. It was worse. It was someone Snapchatting.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Snapchat. I am a fellow Snapchatter. I Snapchat funny pictures and spend 20 minutes trying to get that selfie that looks like I didn’t try too hard and that is juuuuuust right to send to my crush. I just don’t experience every single moment through my phone camera. I believe that this generation doesn’t need another distraction downloaded onto our phones to keep them away from the world around them, and Snapchat is becoming that distraction. Capturing the moment is one thing, capturing every single moment for your snap story and therefore experiencing the moment through your phone camera is another. Snapchat has also become a bigger deal than it should be. What is bothersome is the fact that people these days are more concerned about how many views they get on their story instead of actually enjoying what’s going on around them. There are many different Snappers, but what we all have in common is the fact that they would rather make everyone on our Snap list think we are having a fun time, even if we’re not. We have come to accept as knowledge the fact that if it wasn’t captured and posted on Snapstory then it really didn’t happen.

The guy at the party who blinded me with his Snap video trying to document the party atmosphere so he could show all his friends snapped me out of the moment I was in. He made me question, "Should I pull out my phone and Snapchat this? Because if I don’t, will I remember it?" And I want to show all my friends that yes I go out and yes I have great times. But then I remembered that if I’m too busy being concerned on what others think and what is worthy of a Snap story then I’m missing out on what’s happening right in front of me. I didn’t want to try and hold onto this moment quite yet, I’ll remember this moment tomorrow so I can hold onto it. Right now, I wanted to live it.