At every moment of silence or boredom, it’s now natural for everyone to pull out a phone and scroll through social media feeds. While I understand the appeal of checking in a few times each day to keep up with what is going on, some people take that to the extreme and don’t really ever get off social media. This is tragic to me. Obsessing over likes on Instagram and following hundreds of Twitter accounts so the feed is always new just doesn’t seem too healthy to me.

 

Recently, I’ve been on a couple of vacations where I haven’t had the best service or Wi-Fi access (GASP!). Through this experience I’ve realized that it’s amazing how liberating being away from technology is. I read a novel in the time that I would normally spend scrolling through Twitter, and having conversations was so much easier without screens in front of everyone’s faces.

 

What I challenge all of you to do is to try unplugging for a little while. Now, I’m not talking about deleting every account you have and throwing your smart phone off of a bridge; you can start out slow. Just spend a few hours a day that you would normally spend on your phone doing something else. Read a book, learn a new skill, go exploring, take a nap--whatever it is, try it. Odds are, you’ll feel slightly liberated without your phone, and might even end up less reliant on it in the end.

I feel like sometimes we get too caught up in creating our perfect lives online that we forget to do that offline. People want to show their followers how great a time they are having so much that they sometimes forget to actually have fun. Spending all your time thinking of funny tweets or watching a concert through your phone just so there is one Instagram-worthy picture isn't giving your offline self the best version of life you could be getting.

In a society that’s so plugged in, I feel like everyone, including myself, should try to take some time unplugged for a while. While at first reaching for something other than a smart phone may seem weird, after a while it feels nice. And let’s be honest, not everything in life needs to be a Snapchat story; some things are just meant for those present to enjoy. Plus, life looks better through your eyes than the Valencia filter anyway.