We live by 140 characters, a caption, and a dog snapchat filter. Phone calls and hand written letters are irrelevant when you have unlimited data, imessage, and spelling and grammar check. Everything we do is consumed by a screen. Think about it; we type, we text, we go on social media, we take pictures, and we live through a screen. Society just doesn’t function without a Wi-Fi connection anymore.

The human to human contact is kept to a minimum because eye contact makes people uncomfortable and a conversation can no longer be kept up. People get nervous and are constantly feeling judged, therefore, the easiest escape mechanism is to pull out a phone. Even if that person has no one to talk to, it makes them seem busy and it makes them seem unapproachable.

We can hide behind our screens. It’s a safety net because it limits our contact with one another. You don’t have to talk to your family everyday if you post a snapchat story or send a quick text every once in a while, so at least they know your still alive.

Texting is simple but it’s impersonal. Instagram lets us show off our best pictures of ourselves, but 99% of those pictures are edited with filters to show people what we want to look like. Snapchat seems to be real because its literally a live photo, but then again, anyone can add a cute bunny filter and seem completely different. Oh, and let’s not forget Twitter, because that lets us post our inner thoughts just as long as those thoughts include sliding into someone’s DM’s.

So where did we go wrong? Well, I don’t think we did. We all bought Netflix subscriptions, and we all downloaded apps because that was the trend. People tried to boycott, they tried to say, “I won’t be consumed by my phone” But let’s be honest, no one can go a single day without their phone anymore and no one can live without the virtual interaction. We must know every little thing about everyone and everything, even if we’ve never actually seen that person in real life, because at least we follow each other on Instagram.