Imagine living without a cell phone. Almost impossible right? In 2016, social media is everything. Crafting the perfect tweet or the perfect Instagram caption matters more to some of us than our grades. How did we functions without cell phones? Oh yeah, we talked to each other in person.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not one of those hippies who doesn’t believe in technology and is trying to tell you never to use it again. I believe in technology and I know it can be used for good things like learning and looking things up. But because we have become more invested in our phones than anything else, I believe that we have lost a lot in our lives.

Most of us have lost the ability to be ourselves when we aren’t behind a screen. On social media, you can be whoever you want to be. You can post the best-looking selfies, update your status to whatever you want to be doing at the moment, but a lot of us hide our true selves because we don’t want people to know our downfalls.

I feel like a lot of young people today cannot have a normal conversation in person. Now, when you like someone, you “slide into their DM’s” and only talk to them online. When you see them in person, you either smile at them or pretend you don’t know them. Instead of getting out of the car to knock on someone’s door, it’s just a simple, “Here” text. Or you talk to a lot of people online and then you see them in real life and they aren’t what you expected them to be because they have created their “perfect self” on their social media pages.

We have lost the beauty of in person conversation. We are more connected to our phones than real people anymore. Not a lot of people can function without their phone for more than a couple of hours. I am beyond guilty of this and so are a lot of people, but we need to bring back communicating with others face to face.

Whenever you see a bunch of teenagers together, they are all staring at their phones, not even talking to each other. Why hang out with someone if you’re just going to be talking to someone else the whole time? People have come up with the assumption that if you’re not talking to someone 24/7 on your phone, that you’re a loser. They “pretend” to text so they don’t look like they're alone. That’s not what I want my kids doing. Look at how bad we are with our phones, it’s only going to get worse.

We are all guilty of this and I fully support the use of technology and the internet, but it cannot consume our lives the way it is right now. Some people don’t want to go out hiking because they might not have service. We need to stop letting our cell phones live our life for us. Look up from your phone once in awhile. Look around you. Talk to someone that looks like they are lonely. Enjoy the nature that’s around you. Have a conversation with someone, face to face.