I recently saw a YouTube video entitled “Look Up.” Throughout this video, technology and the importance we place on it, is increasingly discussed as people go about their daily lives and interact in different scenarios. The speaker goes on to state that we have “become slaves to the technology we mastered,” And here comes the hard hitting question, are we alone now more than ever?

I currently have 241 friends on my Facebook profile. Which led me to wonder, how many of these “friends” are actually my friends? Alternately, how many times do we ignore our “real-time” friends for the hundreds of friends that we have on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.? For example, my friends and I have nights where we all hang out and one of the first things we do is post a status about what we’re doing, where we are, and of course, who we are with. We interrupt your daily scrolling to let you know that we are all hanging out and the other 200 something of you are sitting down reading this post. As if any of our other “friends” actually cares that that’s what we are doing.

Because technology is such a large part of our lives, having an actual conversation with someone is nearly impossible without picking up the phone, whether it’s to answer a text, like a picture or something that is evidently more important than the conversation you are having with this person in “real-time.” Real time is almost non-existent when you can contact anyone with the push of a send button. Which brings me back to the idea that we are alone. Cell phones to relationships are now synonymous with an iceberg to the Titanic. We are taught that putting your phone face down means that there is something to hide. Shouldn’t it mean something like “Hey, my phone is facing down because I want you to know that you have my full and undivided attention"?

Having access to so many people in such a short amount of time is a blessing (and a curse in disguise). While having such instant contact with people gives us a feeling of knowing what is going on with everyone, it also gives us access to the opinions of these people. Our individuality takes a hit when we are all buried, heads down, into our phones. We now watch sunsets with someone we care about through the screens of our phones, because “we have to get that picture for Instagram” #sunset #lifeisbeautiful. Our first thought when someone says “Hey, did you just see that?” is “Damn, that was a great photo op.” Instead of spending precious time with our family and friends, we spend endless amounts of time scrolling through other people’s lives, no doubt feeling bad about our own.

We spend so much time looking at other people’s lives that we let our own pass by. We use our cellphones to ignore talking to people (be honest, at some point or another you have pretended to have a phone call to avoid an actual conversation). We live our lives through screens rather than actually living our lives. So really, while technology makes us more connected to LED lights and touchscreens, does it really make you more connected to the people standing right in front of you?