Modern social media interaction is much like the proverbial tree in the forest: if no one is around to hear it, did it really fall? In modern society, the proverbial tree of our lives is: if we don't post about what were doing, did it really happen?

There is a certain gratification that comes from looking down at your phone and seeing a bounty of notifications appear. You scroll through your phone and bask in the swarm of attention your super trendy Instagram photo is getting. The thrill of acceptance in social media has you buzzing, but this feeling is sadly temporary.

You then feel responsible to maintain this level of likes on your posts and soon enough you begin thinking of new adventures to take in order to share your photos with social media. While it is understandable to share memorable experiences in your life, the want for recognition of those experiences is driving many people to do things just to tell others about it.

Before the technology revolution, communication depended on interpersonal interactions where experiences were shared verbally and stories were told with sincerity. In the modern age, photos are taken at higher rates than ever, and those photos can be cropped and filtered to represent a different story than reality. We are able to filter the bad parts out of vacations or experiences and just show the online world what we want them to see. This ability to filter our lives has jaded the newer generations, as we are pressured to qualify our lives by posting about them.

There is innate jealousy that comes from this culture of sharing and cropping our lives. Vacations, new clothes, new relationships -- all these common life experiences can be filtered through the social media sphere and create more jealousy than admiration. While no one will ever admit to enjoying being the envy of others, receiving likes for photos of your weekend skiing comes close enough to gratifying that you are indeed better.

However, this superior feeling is just as temporary as the photos relevance and after a day those likes become meaningless. We crave this feeling to have others be impressed with what we are doing and in order to maintain this feeling we post as much as possible. A Starbucks drink, a day hike with friends, and new outfit, a selfie by an artsy wall. We've all seen these posts and have most likely tapped twice to confirm that we like the photo, but do we ever think about what that "like" is doing?

It may seem insignificant to "like" others posts or photos as they will assume to receive more than just one; however, every "like" is an admiration of that person's life. By liking a photo we are saying that we not only acknowledge that they are living a cool life, but that we also enjoy seeing it. This will encourage the poster to keep sharing artsy photos of their lives to receive more likes from you, which means photos of cats and coffee cups are surely in your future.

I cannot insist that we completely stop interacting with social media because it is already deeply threaded through our social lives, but there is a possibility that we can break this habit of living through our "likes." If we begin liking only photos we truly enjoy as well as only post photos we feel deserve "likes," then we may begin a new culture of appreciation. This would decrease the amount of photos posted just to ensure that we feel relevant, and it will begin a movement of sharing "real" life experiences. Once we lose this insistent need to share every detail of our lives, we can start to realize the truly significant parts.