I’m unashamed to admit it, but I am a Pinterest addict. I love it, and I know a lot of other people do to. I’m an organizing freak with a love of color coding and an obsession with all things Pottery Barn. I don’t know if it’s because I get to combine all of these loves on Pinterest, or if it’s the fact that I’m a planner and like to be in control of my life way ahead of time, but Pinterest fever has taken me over and I have to admit, as painful as it is, it’s a crime. I have five simple reasons as to why Pinterest is ruining our lives:

1. Craft skills

Everyone likes to think that when it comes to crafts they’ve got a certain level of skill. You can follow a tutorial, watch a video, follow directions, but Pinterest is ruining that. Pinterest took away my love of crafts, and honestly, some of my confidence in following simple directions. So we can’t blend colored pencils together or manage chevron on our nails, but that doesn’t mean we can’t rock that drawing tutorial.

2. Expectations for the future

As a group we like to plan things out, whether it be dinners for the week, a new house, or a wedding, or in my case, five weddings. That’s not a bad thing. We all have expectations for what we want to happen in the future; we have expectations already made up for future spouses, homes, and lives, and those expectations won’t be met at times. Pinterest shouldn’t raise or lower our expectations, it shouldn’t dictate our paths.

3. Coordination

Like I said, we all like to plan things out. Pinterest has allowed our organization obsession to spread to all aspects of our lives, including dorm room, clothes, and everything in-between. As we coordinate with roommates and friends, we learn that we can’t always get what we want, it’s impossible. For a small town girl like me, resources (like my non-existent local Target) are limited to be able to 100 percent coordinated.

4. Resources

I’ve mentioned that resources are always limited, and one of the most valuable resources for a college girl (or boy) is time. By allowing us a pretty unlimited amount of pins, we tend to think that we can do anything and everything. We can do our homework, work at our jobs, make the pretty canvas crafts, try a new hairstyle, try contouring for the first time, fix our favorite pair of shoes, and so on. But time is limited, there are only so many hours in the day and that’s something to come to terms with since coming to college. Pinterest has taken a back-burner and responsibility is the main pot on the stove.

5. Time

This may sound like it belongs with No. 4, but let me tell you something about time: it’s relative. We can love sitting and pinning for hours on end, not that I can get away with it honestly, but at random parts of the day we’ll check our feeds, see if any of our friends have posted anything interesting, and we’ll representing a few of the interesting ones. Then there’s times when we use Pinterest as a tool to ignore some of our loved ones…sorry guys. Whenever a boring topic comes up, or a topic that I don’t particularly like comes into play I unlock my phone, open the top right app, and look at the feed to distract me. I go into Pinterest mode and give my attention to something much less important. It’s not fair to others I know, and by focusing on an app rather than the words of my friends and family I’m pretty much saying, “Hey, this app is better than you are,” which let me tell you is false.

I love the life I have, the one that actually exists. I can’t say that I’m inclined to delete Pinterest (even after admitting the relationship problems Pinterest and I are having). It truly is a useful tool. What I can say is that now that I am more aware of how it affects me I will try to stop living from an app, and rather use it to help inspire me in the little ways, to start to live my own reality.