Every year a new app comes out, a new phone is introduced by Apple and a new piece of "wearable" technology is introduced. The world is changing faster than ever and while many of these changes are exciting and revolutionary, there are many downsides as well. How are these new gadgets affecting the way we act as people? Are we more or less equipped to handle the world now that everything we want and need is at our fingertips? The 2016 election brought about a plethora of questions in regards to reliable news. Have our cell phones made us more or less informed as Americans? These are all questions that have arisen in the past few years and will continue to arise as technology grows and changes.

The dating world -and the friend world- has changed entirely with the introduction of smartphones. The current young adult generation is the first generation to not remember a time without cell phones, smartphones, and social media. For most of us, we spent our middle school years looking into the three-inch screens of flip phones but none the less, cell phones were a thing and smartphones were on the rise.

Sadly, we have an entirely new perspective on dating. Becoming interested in another person is more based off of the pictures they post on Instagram and the nature of their text messages than the way they behave on a regular basis. How are we expected to get to know another person when "dates" are more of, "get together and stare at our phones in the same room" meetings. For most college-aged girls there is nothing more attractive than a guy willing to set his phone down long enough to have a conversation with you.

The negative sides of social media don't stop with teens and young adults. Instagram, is killing the self-esteem of all ages. As dramatic as it sounds young girls (and guys) spend hours every day scrolling through pictures of seemingly perfect bodies, relationships, and friendships. It is impossible not to feel left out when your friends are posting Snapchat and Instagram stories of their every move. The days of playing in the woods until the sun goes down or spending countless hours riding bikes in a circle have come to an end. Play dates have once again become "get together and play on our iPhone" meetings.

We live in an age of constant criticism when it comes to the time we spend texting, snapping, instagramming, posting, facebooking, tindering, emailing and the list goes on and on. As aggravating as it may seem, the criticism is justified. We have forgotten how to hold a conversation, we no longer read, we spend more time looking at our screens than looking at the world around us and most of the time, the information we repeat is based on entertainment rather than fact.

Hope is definitely NOT lost though. We are becoming more and more aware of this technology epidemic and we have the ability to change the way we use our phones. Make an effort to "hang up and hang out", leave the phones upstairs during dinner, ask a cute guy (or girl) to a movie rather than for a FaceTime date, sign out of your social media for a week or two. There are so many chances for us to go back to being a more present generation. It's time to take a stand and disconnect before we ruin any chance we have a being an intellectually competitive generation.