We live in a time when social media is an ever present element in our lives. We’re constantly being watched, judged and criticized, no matter what we do. It is as though there is always a surveillance camera directly on us, sharing everything we do with the rest of the world. But what's the worst part? We are the ones turning the cameras on ourselves.

Everyone is guilty of sharing aspects of their lives on social media, whether it's a photo of something cool we did that day, an outfit that we really like or maybe we spent ages on our makeup and feel like taking a cute selfie. Now, that’s all fine until we’re on the other side of the phone, scrolling through our timeline, watching our friends doing fun things, wearing cool outfits, with their perfect makeup. It is easy to start believing that their lives are perfect; every day is fun, every outfit is gorgeous, their makeup is flawless everyday.

However, this isn't reality. We see the perfect selfie, but we don’t see how many photos she took to get that one -- how many angles, how many lighting options, how many filters used. And while we might tell ourselves that social media is not a reflection of reality, we still allow it to take up a huge portion of our lives, allow it to influence us in what we do and there isn’t really an escape.

We can’t turn off social media. It’s the last thing we check before bed and the first thing we see when we wake up. We even take it to the bathroom with us. We’re constantly checking, seeing what other people are up to, if anyone commented on our status, seeing how many likes our new profile picture got, and did that person snapchat us back? Or we could be watching a TV show while mindlessly scrolling on our phone, alternating between Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram.

We have become unable to focus on just one thing; social media is always on our minds and it influences everything we do. When did we last take a picture for the sake of taking a picture and not because we think it’d look good on Instagram? Social media isn’t the reason we do things, but it has reached the point that we don’t feel like we’ve done something unless it’s we’ve posted a picture. If it isn’t on Facebook, did it even happen?

While not everybody feels this way about social media, it has become an increasingly popular attitude over the past couple of years. I am definitely guilty of treating it this way, to an extent. But, I’ve encouraged myself to leave it behind when going out to meet my friends, keeping it away from my bed at night, giving myself half an hour in the morning before checking my messages. Whether you feel this way or not, I think taking a step back from social media every now and then is a good thing. It's also healthy.