Yesterday, like every day, I whipped my iPad out of my backpack to send an email. How convenient, I thought to myself. I can answer my email in my ten minutes of downtime on a bigger screen than my tiny iPhone 5. The portability, speed, and overwhelming capability of a tablet makes it the perfect device to carry around with me constantly, easily letting me pull it out at any given moment I need to connect with someone or complete a task.

Except, how often do college students do this? Most people have an iPad, a smartphone, or even a laptop -- they all function the same. It's so much easier to pull up your Facebook messenger and send an article to your friend with a “What do u think?” than shuffling down the hall, seeking them out, and explaining the premise of the story before having an actual conversation. But then again, if you don't have to haul yourself out of your desk chair, you can resume researching your paper on Emily Dickinson without the 30-minute detour. These advances are supposed to increase productivity, and often under prime conditions they work out that way, but sometimes all they do is bless the world with cute dog videos and a half-finished history assignment.

I am not sure whether the innovations our generation has been gifted with are truly beneficial. When I first started using my iPad, I was obviously (and loudly) stoked: I could place the device on my desk and answer pressing emails in class instead of waiting until the end of the day. Since I'm an Apple gal, I can answer text messages without pulling out my phone and disrupting my work flow. I considered that not only an accomplishment, but a time saver. But how great is that, really?

I send 20 emails a day, which is 15 more than I should have to and 19 more than I'd like to, under the guise of how wonderful it is to be in constant contact with the people who need to communicate with me. But then I realized the catch: I was in constant contact with people. I was rolling over in bed to turn off my alarm and scroll through my inbox. Sure, this is a great quality in someone dedicated to their job or their responsibilities, but where do you draw the line -- before or after you become Anne Hathaway in "The Devil Wears Prada"?

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's a trying thing; sometimes you want to be unreachable. Phones and tablets and the like ensure that you can be reached at any and all times. And while that's great for moms and angry girlfriends, it's not so exciting for the rest of us. This generation of technology users is not an isolated one -- that's for sure. I can be alone all day and still feel like I hung out with a crowd because I can't get away from drama or questions or people making small talk that undoubtedly belabors my reading assignments. There is no escape from people anymore, unless you unplug yourself.

This is nothing we don't already know; countless studies have been conducted on the effects of technology, supplemented by articles by Baby Boomers who claim we are running this fragile society into the dirt. But perhaps we haven't considered the minor effects (and benefits, don't get me wrong) of technology: I can do my job more effectively when I am able to answer time-sensitive questions or take quick action, and the accessibility of projects at any time is overwhelmingly handy. But then again, do I want to be the person always answering questions because people know I check my email every half-hour? How much research for a project is too much research -- when you're missing out on classes happening right in front of you to surf JSTOR?

There are two sides to every coin, and this one right here is a loaded piece of money. I would never trade in my iPad for my old Motorola Razr, and not just because that thing was cotton-candy pink. But would it be nice to be truly alone every once in a while? You bet. And while I might not get there today or next week, I might not check my email until 10 a.m. tomorrow.