There was once a time when people spent nights gazing up at the stars before bed, wondering if they were alone in their thoughts. They lived in a world that many of us couldn’t even begin to imagine: disconnected from people by the lack of devices with which to reach out.

But then, as quick as a swipe left on a 30-year-old wearing a fedora on his Tinder profile, came the advent of social media. Years later, social media is a huge part of our lives and to be off the grid? Now that’s something we can’t imagine.

Social media seems to have started without much commotion as a quirky trend for instant messaging with friends (AIM anyone?) and gained momentum and innovation until it transformed into a whole series of platforms. From websites and bio pages on Facebook to apps and a whole new level of continuous immersion, we live in a generation that doesn’t need to worry about being alone. But you can’t have the social media conversation without also talking about its effects on our lives, relationships, self-image, etc.

It’s easy to start pointing fingers at platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat even as we’re all using them and benefiting from them, but at the same time as unfortunate as it is, there are definite risks and issues with social media. I’ll start off with some very obvious ones.

To start off:

1. Privacy

Is it possible to even remember a time when you didn’t know where everyone was at any given moment? So many young people have social media and to create things like location tracking services as options for them, even if its a dope nation-wide map featuring Bitmojis (Snapchat, I’m looking at you), to even offer such an invasive feature seems almost irresponsible. Many people have no issues with these features and welcome them of course, but the tea is that there is a line between cool interesting features and potentially dangerous ones.

2. Relationships

Now, this point isn’t really a negative as much as it's just an observation. From Tinder to Bumble to Grindr to every other form of romantic/relationship inclined social media; are we missing out on something huge when we choose to reduce a potential human interaction to a single game-like interface? I don’t mean to get philosophical, but isn’t there something important about meeting someone in person and getting to judge them (much like the way we do behind a phone screen) but at least face to face? Each to their own though and I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of these apps are refreshing and interesting. In its own way social media presents an exciting way to meet new people so if you're up for it, DM dive your heart out.

In case you were wondering, the irony of discussing the ill effects of social media on a social media website is not lost on me. As backward as it sounds, social media is the single greatest tool every millennial has. In today's technological storm, we’re over-inundated with the concerns and fears of researchers and click-bait articles (haha) that tell us about all our generational social media issues. Because of this very reason, even when a topic is something important, it's very easy to become apathetic.

If you’re like me and your mom comes up to you every other weekend with yet another well-meaning but wholly unnecessary rant about how social media & technology is controlling you, all you can really do is roll your eyes like yeah haha I get it, but wait omg mom look at this Instafamous puppy. And while I used to pretend not to pay attention to her, I didn't realize how much I had unwittingly learned. I began to observe the effects of this atmosphere that social media had created by weaving itself into the very fiber of our lives. It had become so natural that all the unnatural things were hard to pick out at first.

Which is why it’s so important to have the conversation about what it’s doing to us: the good, the bad & the baddies.

3. INSTAFAME

Ever since Instagram was around, Instagram famous people were around. But I think my biggest concern with this app specifically is the current trend for “Instabaddies”. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of these girls/guys are genuinely BAD AS HELL, beautiful and happy, but my issue lies in the false images that a lot of young people feel like they need to live up to. Very often I want to grab the young girls (literally 12 and 13 year old girls) around me and throttle them, like yeah, Sarah Lou the 5’11” model is on a tropical Island in the middle of December, and while that is amazing for her, everyone else's completely average lives and experiences are valid.

Proud millennial that I am, a cellular phone with connectivity to me is as important as breathing. I firmly stand against people (like my mother) & other tech naysayers about the "addiction" to social media. Because okay honestly, of all things, I'm just saying it could’ve been meth. There’s a definite attachment that you develop to your cellular device & not for how it looks, flat, lifeless metallic object that it is, but for the entire world that exists in a flash right through that small handheld screen. It’s the possibilities of growth & communication that we grew up with existing within that selfie-camera enabled device that set apart our generation from any that came before us. And with those possibilities comes the bright, cell-phone-flash lit path that social media has given us.

Like, for us in 2017, we don’t just take Snapchats, we take Snapchats with Joe Biden.