We know that many people have someone in mind that is so significant that they feel the need to stalk her or him--through social media, irresponsible magazines, and other means--but why is it that they are inherently exempt from a right to privacy? Why is it that the celebrities themselves are not the only people to suffer from their net worth, but children, spouses, and even friends are also left to fend for themselves?

Most recently, the president's daughter, Malia Obama, has been followed around by the press after having just graduated high school. She has been documented dancing at Lollapalooza, going on the town, and apparently smoking weed--how terrible--but there is a reason she did all of these things with a wall of bodyguards surrounding her.

This is a reality that a lot of celebrities and their children face, always having to be ready for a camera to be stuck in their faces so that people can get their fix of whatever high being a creepy stalker gives them, considering the fact that the ban of excessive coverage of children in the media has struggled to finally be written into the law.

With headlines like, "Michelle Obama wipes something off her husband Barack Obama's nose" or "Sasha Obama gets an unglamorous summer job," where are we really? Things as insignificant as this are reported all the time, and the first family is definitely not the first to experience this. Are we really that jealous and that entrenched in other people's lives that we need to document every single moment to feel better about ourselves?

Many, many people document every single thing they do willingly, whether they be famous or not, and it's annoying enough when you have a friend that doesn't seem to be able to get her nose off of her latest catch or who can't stop sending pics with every single Snapchat filter known to man (including the infamous dog filter). Then there are the "100 likes and I'll ____" or "This is my 300 calorie lunch."

Is this really what it takes to become famous if you aren't already?

Of course, for those who were already big names before the boom in social media, they didn't even have the choice of relinquishing their privacy in such a way--the decision was always made for them. For decades, people have been asking George Clooney his favorite color, food, and place to go when he isn't working, of his three summer homes. They've wondered if a young Emma Watson would ever date a strapping Daniel Radcliffe or an eccentric Rupert Grint, and we have since figured out the answers to all these trivial questions and more.

We know all these things--we are so brilliant and capable as a species--but we consistently prove incapable of refraining from worsening other people's lives and truly bettering our own.

We don't know nearly as much about the people right next to us and how we can help them as we do people who don't know us and who don't want us to know anything about them, and that is truly a shame on our parts. We can do amazing things and we choose to do things like this, all in the name of profit.