Dedicated to the boy who “hates chick-flicks” yet paid 11.50 to sit and snapchat through one

Typical movie theater etiquette is to silence your cell phone when the lights go down. And don't worry if you forget, the screen will remind you a hundred times before the movie actually begins (8:30 showing, yeah right). Yet in a dark room with full surround sound it isn’t so much the ringing that will drive your fellow movie goers batty, but the not so subtle glow of your screen.

You wouldn't answer your cell phone in the theater, yet continuing a conversation via snapchat is perfectly okay. Makes total sense right? Just because your voice isn't echoing through the theater doesn’t mean you aren't disrupting the movie. No matter how low the brightness on your phone is t’s going to light up that theater like a firework, especially when you utilize that handy forward flash because for some reason its too dark in the theater to see your face!

We have all heard it from our grandparents, parents, and teachers “you kids spend too much time on your phones”, “kids and their technology”, “when I was your age…”. When I was younger and texting was the only thing I could do on my slide phone I just rolled my eyes. Yet with smartphones and their subsequent increase in both social media access and apps closing on a decade of existence, there is a definite change occurring in my own generation and society as a whole.

The most noticeable is a decline in common courtesy. Whether it is answering your phone in a restaurant, blasting music from your phone on the light rail, or snap chatting in a movie theater, it is not polite to those around you. The phones in our hands are inundated with apps from Facebook to iMessage to Snapchat designed to connect us to the world around us, yet they seem to function as blinders to reality more than anything else.

Yes, technology has completely changed our world and its definition of productivity. But I believe we have taken this goal of productivity to a dangerous level. Hanging out with friends is constantly documented on some form of social media. Work is impossible to leave at the office as it follows us home through our devices. In class, iPads are utilized to play games or keep up with March Madness rather than to take notes. Even as I write this, I am also attempting to watch the USA vs. France Women’s Olympic Soccer Match.

So what to do? Getting rid of technology altogether is out of the question. Our society is so completely centered around it that the world would grind to a halt. It is up to us to make an effort to be productive in manners that are actually productive and work to be present in the world around us rather than living vicariously through our smartphones, laptops and the plethora of technology that surrounds us every minute of every day.