I've always heard that our generation is the generation of screens: we live by screens, we communicate through screens. Screens are everything to our generation, apparently. We would literally cease to exist without our phones in front of us, I suppose... without the bright light of oblivion to stare at, we can't possibly function.

And since it seems everyone believes that these screens run our lives, it creates somewhat of a generational gap. People older than us can't communicate with us, or at least that's what I've been told. Everyone shakes their fists at us and wonders where they went wrong, and they think about how in the world they're supposed to have a conversation with us in our modern day and age.

Well, to answer that, I simply have a story. A story of how screens run everyone's lives, and just how efficient communication is between generations.

Now, I will begin my tale with this: I am one of the few people who actually enjoys spending time with my parents. I can effectively communicate with them, even though sometimes I have to repeat myself seventeen times or yell across the room only to be told that they can't hear me anyway. So is life.

Our tale begins with my parents and I sitting in the living room, watching a show together. Let me set the scene a little more clearly and be more specific about the whole "watching" thing. I was sitting in a chair, watching (yes, actually watching) the show on our sizable television at the front of the room. My parents, not two feet from me, were sitting together on the couch. However, they did not have any interest in the big screen in front of them: my dad was on his IPad and my mom was on her Samsung Galaxy tablet.

Now, let's take a breather right there. The Millennial, the supposed "screen generation" person, aka me, was watching the show in front of her, while the older generation, aka my parents, were on their little devices. Would you like to know what they were doing? I'm going to tell you anyway: my dad has an addiction to Candy Crush, and my mom has an addiction to looking up strange recipes on the internet. See where I'm going here?

So, as we're all sitting in the living room "watching" the show, it is not simply me watching and them playing on their devices. No; this is where the communication issue plays a role. While I have been told, over and over, that our generation communicates via screens, what happened next literally astounded me.

While they were both doing separate things on separate tablets, they were talking. The conversation went something like this: my dad would ask a question to my mom, who wouldn't hear him because she was engrossed in her own tablet, and without waiting for a response, my dad would continue talking to himself. He'd carry on a conversation, asking her opinion or asking her questions, but answering them himself. He seemingly either didn't realize or was too engrossed in his own candy crushing to understand that he was talking to himself.

In return, my mom was asking questions of how to get her device to function, and like my father, didn't wait for answers and began to have a conversation with herself as well. So, there I was, both of my parents talking to each other but having a conversation solely to themselves. I sat and stared. This lasted for a good five minutes: my dad would tell a cheesy joke and laugh at it, and my mom would ask a question and figure it out by talking herself through it.

I thought it was hilarious.

My point is, don't be fazed when someone talks about our generation as the screen-dwellers- everyone else is just as bad, if not worse, than we are. While we may have the benefit of getting to use all of this new technology, we also get to watch what it does to the generation that came before us. Communication in person may not be one of our strong suits, but watching my parents talk to themselves while they use our generations' devices is priceless every time.