Every second there is a new photo uploaded on Instagram, another tweet posted on Twitter, a status update on Facebook and an addition to someone’s Snapchat story. Friends, family members, celebrities and the rest of the world are constantly posting on social media, which can make it awfully hard to turn away from your cell phone or laptop screen.

How have we let ourselves become so attached to our electronic devices that we are more concerned about what is happening on the Internet than what is happening around us?

It wasn’t long ago that cell phones didn’t exist at all. To talk to your friends, you would have to dial the telephone and wait for them to pick up instead of quickly shooting them a text. To find out what was happening in the news, you would have to pick up the newspaper or turn on the television. You couldn’t scroll through Twitter or Facebook to see which headlines are being shared the most that morning. Although technology has made communication faster and easier, there was something beautiful and simplistic about communicating before cell phones.

There is nothing that bothers me more than when I am with another person and they pay more attention to their phone than to me. If we are eating dinner together at a restaurant, we should be having a conversation instead of checking Facebook. Even if there is nothing to talk about, who cares? The point of being with someone is to enjoy their company. Check your phone when you go home.

Don’t get me wrong, I am also guilty of staring down at my phone instead of looking up. The Internet is a great tool, but it can quickly turn into your biggest addiction and waste of time. Add up all the hours you spend scrolling through useless posts on social media, and then compare that to what you could’ve been doing with your time instead. Maybe you could’ve cooked your favorite meal. Or taken a mini road trip. Or played baseball. Or painted a picture.

Or done something more worthwhile than chuckle at a viral video.

I am not saying everyone should throw their phones in a fire and forget they ever existed. I am only saying that we shouldn’t be afraid to put them down for a few hours at a time to enjoy time without them. To focus on the people in front of us instead of the people typing messages to us from a different location. there is a time and place to glue ourselves to our cell phones, but sadly, an increasing amount of people are beginning to think that to be constantly using your phone is acceptable.