Being a millennial, I’ve grown up in and with the digital age. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr have become like second nature to me. But why are people our age so obsessed with social media?

For starters, it’s mindless entertainment. If you’re anything like me, you can sit there for hours just scrolling on your timeline or liking people’s photos. It’s something to do without having to actually think about anything. As a college student, I always have something that I know needs to get done and if I can just sit there on my phone for 20 minutes or so, it takes my mind off of all of the homework assignments and studying that I know needs to get done.

Another reason is that there’s just so much that you can do with social media. Want to post a picture of you and your friends at the restaurant you went to last night? Go for it! Looking for a new recipe to try for dinner this weekend? Log onto Facebook and there’s probably a new Tasty video waiting for you to watch. Social media is also a great way to network and make friends. It gives you a chance to talk to people from all over the country and even the world. You could stay online for hours just talking to people. It truly is amazing how much time could be wasted replying to your friend’s tweets.

For some reason, websites such as Tumblr and Twitter just come naturally to those who use it. I have never been formally taught how to use Twitter, but I am more than confident that I could teach somebody else how to use it. These social media outlets are so easy for us to use because we spend most of our free time using them. We make fun of our parents and grandparents who aren’t so tech-savvy when they’re the ones who are spending their time doing something that’s actually valuable rather than sitting in front of their phone screen all of the time like we are.

I’ve learned that people my age always have to know what’s going on. We always have to have the latest iPhone, know who the hottest artists are and be up on the current trends. Social media is a way to get information fast and efficiently with just the tap of an app on our phone’s. Convenient and with the touch of a button, social media can always be accessed no matter where we are.

We tend to care a lot about what other people think. I’ll admit it, I 100% care about how many likes I get on my Instagram picture or my Facebook profile picture and I have absolutely no idea why. Is it because we all need constant validation? Or maybe it boosts our confidence level knowing that 40 plus people thought our selfie was pretty. I’m not sure any of us will ever know why it’s human nature to care so much about what people think, but social media definitely plays a part in how we teenagers feel about ourselves.

By far the worst part of social media is that we let it control us. We let social media take up our time and energy almost every single day. We allow it to take us away from our own reality because we might miss out on someone’s relationship status or if they dyed their hair.

Maybe we should start putting the phones down and seeing how many “likes” we can get from people in real life.