If you type "Social Media" into Google, a million and one results will surface, all berating this thing that is supposedly destroying our culture and relationships. I've heard this perpetual argument belabored to the point where I stopped listening. But in my indifference, I realized that I did in fact have a stance in this debate: I do not think Social Media is as destructive as we have characterized it to be.

"Everything in Moderation," even the best of things, and this certainly applies to our Social Media intake. I believe there is a decent amount of time that can be spent roaming through Twitter or Instagram and there can also be an unhealthy obsession; the trick is to know where you should draw the line. These various outlets were created and intended to be outlets and networks of creativity and communication but we're tried to portray them with a much more malicious intent. We've blamed Social Media as the main perpetrator in our abatement of social interaction but I think we use it as a scapegoat to shift responsibility away from ourselves. Unless, through some extreme case of addiction you find yourself completely unable to pry yourself away from Snapchat, you should posses the willpower to dedicate your time to other things. Another argument is that we become too tied up in "capturing" a moment as opposed to enjoying the moment. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going -- bound for dust -- mortal." True, the ephemeral, fleeting aspect of moments is one of the reasons we cherish them so much but people have been taking different measures to immortalize moments and people all throughout history, so why is it so wrong for us?

Why do we continue to paint social media as the villain in this narrative? The reoccurring theme seems to be that we continue to find faults that supposedly stem from these apps. But there is a simple solution to this, we can take responsibility for ourselves and hopefully see that we are, more often than not, creating issues that hadn't previously existed. I think through introspection and evolving we can stop blaming social media for all of our problems.