Born in 1995, I'd like to believe I was blessed enough to experience the greatest childhood this world had to offer. I played with my Skip-It, attempted to "Collect them all" in Pokemon and ran around my neighborhood playground until my tiny relentless legs were seconds away from giving out.

My childhood was centered around enjoying the simple things, like the freedom to run up and down the block and pick the dandelions from the grass, making a wish as I blew with all my might and watching the seeds swirl into the sky. The worst thing that could go wrong would be a scraped knee, which was easily healed by a little Neosporin and a Disney-themed Band-Aid. In today's day and age, it seems that the quick unplugging of an iPad or Xbox could mark the end of life as we know it for this new generation.

Working in a restaurant, I interact with children on a relatively daily basis. As I go to hand them the kids menus filled with crosswords, mazes and connect-the-dots that I at age 20 would still be excited over I can't help but notice their disconnect from their surroundings as they bury themselves into their parents iPads.

They push their crayons aside and leave the conversation to the adults as they try their hardest to beat their highest level in Candy Crush or Angry Birds. Naturally, first instinct is to blame the parents. Why in their right minds would they expose their children to these technologies at ages as young as five or six? What would give them the idea that this is a positive alternative to an outdoor free-for-all or a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos?

Then I stop to think: what kind of example are we setting as the previous generation? We're all guilty of giving into the control electronics have begun to hold over our heads. It started simply: the first of the iPods started flooding the middle school hallways and suddenly all that mattered was who in class had the highest Doodle Jump score. As we matured as individuals, so did our taste in technology. We upgraded our iPods to iPhones which would inevitably open the door to our guiltiest of pleasures: social media. It's fair to say that our love for technology has had a trickle-down effect on the youth of today, which can only be expected since we are the generation they look up to for role models.

Or is it societies fault in general that these poor children are being gypped out of the good old-fashioned childhood that we've all had the pleasure to look back on? The constant need for change, development and improvement has now tainted the period of one's life that should remain the most carefree and pure.

Money, power and prestige override the desire to instill the same sets of values in children that we have for generations. How are we supposed to teach children the lesson of sharing without them taking turns on the swing set? Or how about the value of team work without a few games of kickball?

All in all, my heart breaks for the millennials. They had no choice in the way their childhood has come to revolve around technology, and it truly is a shame. I hope that in due time, the previous generations can instill the values we were taught as children in ways similar to our own upbringing, without the touch screen as a starting point.