Over the course of the last five or so years, I have become increasingly attached to my phone. I've made myself constantly available to everyone whether they were with me or not. It's become so easy to show everyone all of the details you want them to see about your life within seconds with the use of smartphones and apps like Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram. I had become completely addicted to showing everyone what my life was like through social media platforms that I completely lost the idea of being present. I would miss complete sentences of what someone was saying to me in person because I was too busy updating a Facebook status or reading a Twitter post. I would ignore the people around me, making them feel like they weren't worth my time because I was too interested in what was happening on my screen.

Let's be real for a minute. This is a huge problem with society as a whole today. It isn't going away anytime soon and chances are you're struggling with the same things I struggle with every day.

Now, don't get me wrong, social media is amazing. I actually moved to this beautiful city after making friends with some really great people via Twitter. I kind of owe my whole family now to using social media. I use it daily for my job, learn amazing things about Cleveland, and have met some seriously amazing people because of social media. I don't think it's terrible. I do think that us missing life's precious moments because we are too busy trying to keep up with "the social media elite" is terrible. I think that us not seeing the beauty of what's right in front of us because we are too busy trying to watch the newest cat videos is terrible. I think people not even able to put their phones down while they drive down the road is terrible.

I want to challenge you to do what I've been working on the past two weeks. Be present. Talk to the people around you without using your phone for once. Quit dropping the details of your life on Twitter every five seconds as if the people reading deserve more attention than the ones you're ignoring sit in front of you. I promise you can post that nifty hashtag later and it won't kill you to try to be relevant in the now and not on your newsfeed. Stop trying to continuously push the idea that you're cool on the internet when you can't even hold down a real social life outside of your tiny handheld device. Be present. You won't know what or who you're missing until you are.