I'm a millennial. I grew up around cell phones and easily accessible internet. By the time I was 16, I had a cell phone along with a Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram account, and everyday access to a camera.

At first, it was all fun. Being able to chat with friends online and keep up with people from far away. Uploading photos with funny captions (because everyone reads those...) and thinking up witty things under 120 characters that I could tweet. But before I knew it I wasn't doing all of those things for just myself, I was doing them for everyone else too.

I would spend my time thinking up a tweet that my followers would find cool and worth retweeting. Ones that would make people think I was cool, or trendy, or worth knowing. I'd make sure every photo I uploaded to Instagram was just right and had the perfect caption to make people like me. I'd get discouraged if it didn't get the amount of likes I'd hoped, and I would even take photos down from time to time because people didn't 'like' them.

My generation thrives off of complements, "followers," and likes that ultimately give us a false sense of self-worth.

We equate acceptance to someone double tapping our post on the internet, when in reality the majority of people like most of the photos on their stream. Our post wasn't special, and a "like" doesn't change anything about who we are as people.

If we, millennials, keep finding worth in the amount of likes or followers we have, we'll never learn to be ourselves. We'll never learn to grow as people, or embrace our individuality. We'll be perpetually stuck in the 2in x 2in frame of our Instagram posts.

Social media isn't a bad thing, that's not what I'm getting at. But when we spend every down second of our day scrolling through feeds and comparing ourselves or elevating ourselves, we don't take time for self reflection. We put a hold on self growth to read someone's tweet about how much they love Chick-fil-a, or how much they can't stand this professor, or that one girl in their class.

If all of those free minutes of the day we spend scrolling we instead spent engaged in the physical world around us, we would open a door to a world of growth. Next time you're in line at a coffee shop and you feel the urge to pull your phone out, don't. Look around you, take it in. Notice others, maybe even spark up a conversation with someone in line with you. Yeah, it's hard, because we've gotten into this unconscious habit of having our phones in our hands at all time, but the first step in breaking that habit is fighting the urge.

Stop walking through life with your head down looking at a screen, and start engaging in the world around you.

Start meeting new people in lines at the store instead of creeping on people through Facebook. Life is meant for community, not this faux community that social media makes you feel like you have. Friendship existed in the physical world, not cyberspace.

Social media is a good thing when we have a healthy relationship with it, but it's when we feel like we have to use it to prove and occupy ourselves that we run into trouble.

So, try it. Next time you're in line, keep your phone in your pocket or purse or whatever, and keep your head up and focused on the world around you.

Make friends, not followers.