Social media is something that has erupted in recent years and has become increasingly popular. When I was in elementary school, Myspace was a popular social media website at the time - although not so much in my school. Now Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are the more popular ones. Even though there are many social media websites and apps that we can download onto our phones, are we really becoming more social? Let's look into that.

Social media allows us to share things and contact people who live close and far away from us, whether we know them or not. I have family and friends who live across the country as well as in other countries. Due to sites and apps like Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram, I'm still able to talk to them.

But what about the people who are near me? Well, I can tell you right now that when hanging out with peers, I see that at some points in the conversation, we all sit there on our phones. This doesn't happen all the time such as when we participate in activities such as card games. But even so, I'll catch myself or another person checking our phones.

I feel as if even though social media helps us talk to friends who aren't physically close to us, or even just to organize social events, it also takes away from our face-to-face socializing. I remember one time when I went to do an observation with one of my classes, everyone but me was on their phones. The reason I wasn't was because my phone broke a few days before hand and I wasn't able to get a new one before the observation. It really woke me up and I saw how much time we really spend on our phones instead of actually talking to each other. I try to be more conscious about about how much time I spend on my phone when I'm with my friends. I want to actually be present with my friends and not miss any memories that could have been made.