Let’s admit it. We’ve all Tindered. If you haven’t, you’re lying. As of last year, an estimated 50 million human beings out there are using the little dating app (or shall we say hookup app) to find their special someone. As a senior in college, I am definitely one of those people that has fallen into the deep dark pit of thumbs contributing to over one billion swipes per day.

Every so often, I’d find myself perusing the digital aisles of the Apple Store, usually as I waited for my coffee or sat mindlessly scrolling through my phone at an airport. I’d almost always stumble upon Tinder, download it for kicks, and then eventually delete it within 24 hours after I’d had my fair share of desperate people looking for a fix. Months would go by and I would download it again, and then subsequently delete it when I felt too guilty to even be associated with the site.

Eventually, I would always find my way back to Tinder. It wasn’t something I had planned on doing. It was something that I knew would be there if I needed it. I soon found myself viciously swiping through people, with no real goal in mind other than the thought of how easy it would be to get a quick fix. It was intoxicating. Instant gratification like no other. Reassurance that yes, I was still pretty. Yes, people still found me attractive. And yes, I could hold the attention of a man for more than a few minutes. I got so far into it that I even imagined and entertained the possibility of meeting up with a few guys I went to school with. It would have been so easy.

Although these thoughts sounded appetizing for a few moments I knew that no hookup, no text, no call would ever make me feel better about myself. A random guy wouldn’t make me feel whole. A guy would not make me feel anymore worthy than I already am. Settling for guys through a phone screen would never make me happy because these connections were not real. These guys do not care about you or me or whomever any more than they care about the other thousands of girls they see every day.

This is how most of us interact now, through our phones. Through screens and pictures and likes and how we feel about how other people feel about us.

We spend so much time trying to prove what to other people? That we are somehow more worthy than others? That we have these amazing fake lives? That we know how to take shots of our food so perfectly that we deserve the satisfaction of 150 or more likes?

I’m not saying I haven’t done these things myself. And I am in no way saying I’m anything near perfect. I’ve been the girl who has taken a million shots until I knew which one would get the most attention from people I hardly even knew. I have stood on chairs trying to get the perfect food shot. I’ve done it all.

At one of the college home football games I attended this past fall, I stood behind a group of sorority girls in the student section who were literally only there to take pictures. They came to the game dressed in heels and dresses and fur vests with perfectly curled hair and makeup. They showed up, tried to be annoying as possible as always, and stood there on their phones looking at pictures and selfies of themselves all while getting other sorority girls to take pictures of them.

They were there for about an hour before leaving.

The purpose of this is not to bash sorority girls. What I’m saying is that we have become so caught up in our online world that our outside one is vanishing.

It no longer matters.

People are now finding themselves doing things solely for the purpose of posting it online.

If you haven’t found yourself at Starbucks debating on what drink to get based on how good the IG shot would be, then you’re lying. It’s basically turning into that saying "if a tree falls in the middle of a forest and no one was there to hear it, did it still make a sound?"

If we go to something or do something, but don’t post it, does it even matter anymore? If we don’t post our daily activities, does it not make a sound to the world around us?

This is the mentality we have now. This is our life in 2018. The fact that my first thought when I go to a game, or to eat, or to hang out with friends is what kind of photo will I take to show off online is scary. The fact that our brains are so consumed by something so minuscule and by something that doesn’t matter is terrifying. Social media is turning us into a world of mindless self-obsessed consumers.

I am a huge fan of social media and I'm a social media intern. I’m not saying it's all bad. What I’m saying is that we have to realize that this is ridiculous. Social media is not real. It will not make you feel better.

You cannot rely on pictures, likes, messages, videos or anything to make you feel better about your life. You can never be happy until you are happy with yourself and you cannot be happy with yourself until you are aware that you are unhappy.

Honestly, I hate my generation. Don’t get me wrong, we do amazing things and we are intelligent people with a whole world at our door, waiting for us to do something amazing in it. But, I can’t help but shake the feeling that we are going in the wrong direction. The fact that we are more obsessed with our Starbucks order, the latest iPhone, and who’s following us on social media platforms than anything else is scary.

According to a Zogby poll, almost 90 percent of Millennials say their phones never leave their sides. I know some people who have reported using their phone for more than 8 hours a day. If you don’t believe me, walk into any college classroom, or even down the hallway of a college building, and you’ll find one thing — silence. You’ll find people looking down at their cell phones and laptops and not at each other. You’ll find online conversations and texting threads, but no intellectually stimulating conversations filling the air of university life.

I know as a fellow member of Generation Y, how hard it is to stay away from technology because we have never lived in a world without any. In our "there’s an app for that" world, our daily lives have become easier.

We can now date who we want, when we want.

We can talk to people across the globe.

We can post things for people to see.

Social media, basicness, Starbucks, Snapchat, people vying for attention, fakeness, fat-shaming, slut-shaming, #relationshipgoals, hashtags in general, posting, and posting and posting... it needs to stop somewhere.

I am disgusted by the level of narcism in today’s world.

We have to realize that there is so much more.

We are the new generation.

We are truly going to “inherit the earth,” as cheesy as that sounds.

Let’s make that count.