The other day I was waiting in line to get my lunch and noticed my phone was low on battery so I switched its power mode. As I was doing so, a woman turned around and said, "Look at us! Look at all of us!" Confused as to what she was referencing, I looked up at other people in line and saw they were using their phones as well. She continues with, "Look at who we've become! We can't go one second without using our phones! And kids are worse!" As the type of person to say absolutely nothing in a group of strangers waiting for a sandwich, I glanced at another woman in the line and we exchanged eye rolls. People like that who insist the recent generations are ruined by technology are flat out annoying (and I have screenshots to prove it!). We need to stop comparing generations based on our use of technology.

Comparing this generation of spunky iPhone users, to even our grandparent's generation of not so talented technology users, is absurd. We grew up completely different, even my brother five years younger than me had a different lifestyle. Kids and teens now rely on their cell phones for social media updates, pictures, GPS, even a quick Google search. I personally think its amazing that we have this capability at our fingertips and don't see why it's that big of an issue. Since I was born in the 90's I reached cell phone age by middle school and iPhone age by high school. Social media was starting and wasn't nearly as popular as it is now, but we all tried to keep up. It was almost the best of both worlds because I had a stretch of my life where we didn't rely on technology and now I do. I do not have an opinion on which lifestyle I thought was better because there is no 'better life.'

Regardless of what decade you live in, you adapt and learn how to get by with what you have. I've watched the entire "Friends" series almost three times now and I don't sit there saying, "How did they live without a cell phone and a laptop?" I just watch how their social interactions were different. If they wanted to know where another was, they went to their apartment or the coffee house. Later in the series they start using pagers and flip phones but it never effected the series or the characters right? No. The cast was still your favorite, quirky group of friends regardless of what was in their pocket.

Now, I did get a little more agitated by the above line lady because I was only switching a setting but in the same breath I thought, who cares? Why should I care if I constantly need to check my messages and update my Snapchat (unless you're driving, of course). I think it's incredible that there are apps out there that let you send a quick pic of where you are to twenty of your friends. Technology is great in that, you can have a fire Twitter account with tons of followers, or you can choose not to. There aren't any rules that say you need to do anything but it is quite helpful in many circumstances. For example, I moved to Boston for college and had never been to this city before. I didn't know anyone and had no idea how to get anywhere. I relied on my phone's map app for a long time (even to this day I'll get lost) and it was incredibly useful. Could I have used a big paper map? Yes. But is it just as easy to use an app on my phone? Yes.

So in retrospect, technology is only here to make things easier rather than a process. It's not about how much you use it, but how you use it. As long as you don't get caught up in the media craze, it's fine to whip out your phone while waiting for your food. Our different lives and how we grow up are simply an adaptation. I walked home from school everyday with no phone and now my 16 year old brother has had one since elementary school. But it doesn't matter, we still did the same things, we still went to school and played sports, and turned out alright, it was only the matter of how we got there.

If you stuck Rachel and Ross in 2016, Ross could've picked the right airport using Rachel's location and been there faster, but he still got there. Life still happens whether we take a Snapchat of it or not but we need to stop being told that our lives aren't as good as previous generations.