In this generation, our actions are often dominated by this need to receive acknowledgement for everything we do. Whether it be posting a picture of our dinner on Snapchat or sharing a daily outfit picture on Instagram, we have this need to make sure everyone knows what we're doing and when we're doing it. We're all guilty of doing a lot of these things strictly for the social media cred offered by doing them. We seem to have forgotten what life was like before social media took control of us.

In this generation, people only do things to take pictures of themselves and, in turn, immortalize their actions. By taking pictures of ourselves doing certain things, we are able to make our lives seem more interesting from the outside looking in. We become so engulfed in maintaining our online personas we oftentimes forget to actually enjoy the things we are participating in. I know I'm definitely guilty of this, and sometimes I get so caught up in "taking the perfect Instagram-worthy photo" that I often forget to appreciate where I'm standing. After all, how can you really appreciate the beauty of the beach if you're only seeing it through your iPhone's camera lens?

Controlling the way we appear online is such a nice luxury this generation has. We only post the selfies and the group pictures that we deem flattering, so people only see us as we want to be seen. We get to this point where we just trust that the way people look online is how they really look. You don't look at someone's selfie on Twitter and analyze how much Photoshop was involved or how many different filters went into getting the photo to look the way that it does. When you see someone a beautiful picture, you appreciate it. Perhaps this is one reason why getting "catfished" has become increasingly common.

People hide behind their social media accounts and oftentimes say or share things online that they would never even dream of saying in person. This can be very dangerous when it comes to issues of both personal privacy as well as cyber-bullying. Aside from our words being permanently shared with the online world, there is the even bigger issue of falsifying our lifestyles for the sake of personal image online.

The biggest issue by far would be people living in the age of "doing it for the Vine". People go out of their way to perform ridiculous, illegal, and even life-threatening acts for the sake of a six-second video online. It's terrifying that people will do almost anything to try and get their 15 minutes of fame. Is it really worth it, though?

Candid/off-guard photos have become planned and are now considered cute instead of embarrassing mistakes. You can't deny it: you've asked your friends to just "take a bunch of pictures" as you adjust yourself into the perfect pose and you end up using one of the "off-guard" transition photos in the mix. Or you've even had those moments where you toss your phone to your friend and straight up tell them "get a cute picture of me and make it look candid, please" (or maybe I'm the only one guilty of this, but I know my friends get sick of it).

Group photos require so much more effort to ensure that each member of the group looks presentable. Remember in elementary/middle school when we absolutely hated being forced to take pictures? It was a fight every time our parents tried to get us to squish together with our friends to take a quick picture. Now we expect our every move to be photographed. Going out to eat with your BFFs? Picture. Going group bowling? Picture. Going to the park again? Picture, of course. Again, I am definitely guilty of all of the above.

I'm not saying these are all necessarily bad things. In fact, since people are starting to put more effort into their online presence this can actually be a positive thing. When it comes to looking for a job or applying for a new school or anything of that nature, it is good to have a professional-looking profile on all of your social media accounts. It's also good that we have all of these pictures to look back on when we're older.

However, since our lives have become so posed and proper we oftentimes forget to actually pay attention to life for the way it is. We forget to stop and actually enjoy the beauty of nature when we're outside posing for pictures with our best friends with flowers in our hair. We end up altering our memories of certain events because we see these perfect Instagram-appropriate pictures and think "wow, what a great time in my life" when that might not actually be the case at all. We're so focused on making memories that we try to force it and make pictures that were literally just taken into memories we can use for the next "#ThrowbackThursday" post.

Life is messy and hard and ugly sometimes and we can't forget about that. Social media is a good tool for helping us stay connected with one another and share important moments in our lives but I think it has also made us forget how to really enjoy life. I'm not saying we should stop using social media (because I know I wouldn't be able to function without it), I just think we need to step away from the screens occasionally and actually enjoy some of these parts of life that we take for granted.

We don't have to be slaves to social media and we don't have to constantly be plugged into our devices. Take some time to go outside and enjoy the fresh air with your friends. Leave the phones in your car or at least leave them on "do not disturb" for a while and actually enjoy the time you spend with the people that you love.

As I said before, I'm guilty of participating in basically everything "wrong" with social media. It's something I definitely need to work on, I know, and I plan on trying to unplug more often. Social media is both a blessing and a curse and I think it's important that we try our best to find a balance between our time spent online and offline.