Let me start off by saying this: I love Snapchat.

The fact that I get to send ridiculous, crazy, and sometimes humorous pictures and videos to my friends is great. Plus, there's that feature that makes the picture/video disappear (supposedly) so you don't have to worry about the implications of picture that makes you look like you have five chins.

Snapchat is just one of the many social media platforms that seem to be constantly intertwined with our day-to-day lives. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Tinder... All these social media platforms are a constant presence. A ding, vibration, notification from our phone-- these indicate a like, re-tweet, share, or potential love interest in the palm of our hands. I love how social media allows me to connect with my family and friends, no matter the physical distance.

But how does social media have an affect on the person next to us?

Imagine this: you're catching up with a friend over lunch, just talking about life. Your friend is scrolling through their Instagram feed, giving you one-word responses to your statements and questions. To them, snapshots of other people's lives on the lit-up screen of a phone are more real and present than the living, breathing, talking human sitting across the table from them.

Now, this may happen to you so many times that you've become complacent to this happening. You might have even been the friend who was on Instagram during the conversation, not really paying attention to what was being said. Me personally, I've been on both sides of the table.

Spending undivided, quality time with another person can be pretty tricky to manage these days. When people don't pay attention to what we're saying, look into their phones and not into each other's eyes during a conversation, it's a nonverbal signal that says, "I'd rather be doing something else right now". But here's the thing: spending quality time with one another-- meaning not sitting next to each other on the couch not talking while you're both watching Snapchat stories-- is what makes us human. Human beings naturally crave community; we want other people to acknowledge us, to listen to us, and to make us feel like what we have to say matters. Unfortunately, social media gets in the way of that essential quality time.

Everyone is guilty of putting social media as a barrier between a human-to-human interaction. Teenagers, adults, even older people are looking for the next new article to read, check on how many likes their picture got, or to see if their crush opened that one Snapchat you sent. When we put down our phones, iPads, laptops, and Apple Watches and look another person in the eye and listen to them... That's when true relationships are developed and when true quality time is spent.