This probably goes for a lot of young individuals, but I quite literally live on my phone.

For someone aspiring to become a media specialist and dive into the realm of social media marketing, this is kind of expected. I need to have the knowledge and experience to market it properly, right? Right.

That's my excuse when I'm scrolling aimlessly through social media anyways. But in the middle of my spring semester at college, I noticed that my habits were becoming very taxing and toxic to my mentality.

The culprit? Snapchat.

Now, I've had Snapchat for quite a few years. Before the chat messages, stories, and the cool GIF and drawing features. That awkward era when we weren't really sure what to send to other people but did it anyway. So when they decided to add streaks to one of their many updates a few years ago, I wasn't necessarily phased.

I looked forward to seeing the number of my friends rise. My best friend and I still have our streak over almost 700 days; I can't believe we have sent so many hideous selfies to each other.

I can't pinpoint exactly what time it happened, but sending snap streaks suddenly became very tedious to me. I sent them out every morning before heading to my first class, looking disgusting and frowning at the camera because I was still half asleep and worrying about the impending tasks ahead.

Over ten Snapchats waited for me. But I tapped through them aimlessly, sometimes not even reading the text attached because I knew that is was generic and sent to everyone else on their friend list. Granted, I was guilty of the same thing. It's like we're all caught in this endless loop of empty communication.

And for what? Just to watch a number go up? There are some people that I actually do Snapchat every day: my best friends and my boyfriend. But I don't need to have a streak with a bunch of people that I don't speak to outside of that realm. I don't want social media to feel like an annoying errand that I have to run in the morning.

So I stopped. I stopped sending the streak snaps and I let them all die out (except for the ones where I actually used the app to annoy people, sorry Cole and Alex) by failing to answer their morning replies. It totally wasn't a personal move and I hope that nobody got offended by it in the long run, but I just really was growing tired of it.

If I want to communicate with people, I'd rather do it in a more genuine way. Even some written text is way better than a picture of two of your eyeballs that are out of focus with no text attached. I don't even know why you bothered sending that. I have nothing to work with here.

If you feel like this is something that is stressing you out for no reason, let it slide. Just because your streak is so long doesn't mean that you are obligated to hold onto it. In reality, it means nothing, so why let it bother you and stress you out for a few moments every day?

I'm sure the people on your friend's list will understand. If you're worried about the repercussions, send a simple "Hey! I'm not going to do streaks anymore so just send me a text or something." You gotta put yourself first over virtual commitment.

Overall, I feel less attached and worried about my virtual world. While school and my career aspirations leave me on the Internet a lot, I'm not as stressed when I switch over to personal mode. I don't have to worry about the time because it's almost noon and I didn't send a streak.

I simply get to send pictures of my double chin because I want to, not because I'm worried about an hourglass timer. A true millennial love story.