I can not be found without my phone.
I dread the text from Verizon saying I have blown through my allotted amount of data, and it is instinctual for me to pick up my phone when I am bored. My time is mostly spent on social media, constantly switching between gluing my eyes to Snapchat or Instagram. I rarely use the feature cell phones were originally made for; making phone calls. My ten-year-old cousin, not even in middle school, has an iPhone, the X, she's ten. No.
Looking around the room as I hang out with friends, at least one person is on their phone, part of the time it is me. Going out for meals we have to put our phones in the center of the table because snap chatting the drink we just ordered is just way too tempting. Those fries that just arrived at the table need to be seen by our following.
Our parents complain, saying we are addicted to our phone, wondering why the hell we get so many texts. Worried you're a narcissistic f*ck because all you do is take selfies of yourself. "Phone eats first," so much so Snapchat has even made permanent filters to add to your story. We "do it for the gram" going out of our way to take pictures, to show the people who follow us what we did that day. Some are even Instagram famous, declaring posting to their profile as their careers, making millions of dollars a year, like Jen Selter.
No boat day, music festival, or night out is complete without showing everyone what we did. Now I'm not saying I don't do this, I am SO guilty of this, but I also know it's wrong. We are so glued to technology we sometimes forget to just enjoy the moment, remembering it from our memory, not our Snapchat memories. Without our phones, we feel lost, like an organ has gone missing.
We laugh at how our parents didn't grow up with cell phones, wondering how the hell they made plans or maintained relationships. But isn't that also great? To speak with someone you only had two options, your home phone and in person. Relationships were much more personal, time together was cherished more. Our parents weren't distracted in the library from the snap chat group. They weren't wondering if he was going to text them tonight, or mad they were left on "read."
We're hooked. And as bad as it can be at times, we're also safer, being able to make phone calls or send locations in dangerous situations. We just sometimes define our face value from how many Instagram followers we have, or how funny our Instagram story was, when in the grand scheme of life, it's irrelevant. We have to live for the satisfaction of ourselves, not from our following.
