A few days ago as I sat in a crowded Buffalo Wild Wings with five of my friends, I recognized something: though the restaurant around us was loud, and the atmosphere was that of which you’d expect from a sports bar during the NFL playoffs, our table was quiet. There were other tables filled with people who sat in silence as well, but I couldn’t help but realize that those tables, and our table, all had one thing in common: cell phones. The whole dining area was full of people who were so focused on social media and their phones, that they couldn’t see the beautiful things happening before their eyes. I feel that our generation all has, at some point, (myself included) faded out of a conversation to post to our various social media outlets, whether it be posting to Twitter, Snapchat, or Facebook.
Before I go on, I have to clarify; I’m not one of the disapproving people who think the cellphone is “the new devil.” Cellphones are great, and I love mine and definitely wouldn’t want to give it up entirely, but I’m concerned. Our generation has been blessed with the gift of cellphones, tablets and satellite TV. We all utilize one or more of these, myself included, and we should appreciate them for what they are: beautiful tools to help us with the daily struggle. However, sometimes these beautiful things can stop us from seeing the true beauty that’s in front of us. The experience of it all. I love photography, and I like social media as much as the next person, but recently, I’ve been trying to make sure it's second in my life, not first.
Our generation wants to live an enjoyable life, and experience everything Earth has to offer. However, we also live in a generation that is in love with recording and taking pictures of the things we do. In my personal experience, I have found that those I’m close to, and just our generation in general, aren’t concerned enough with living in the moment. To truly enjoy life and what it has to offer, I believe that we can’t be as concerned as we are about showing other people that we’re having fun, as we are about actually having the fun. We all need to take a step back, and think about what fun we could be having with the time we spend snapchatting people about how much fun we are having.
Earth has so many beautiful things to offer, and our generation has the best opportunity that any generation in history has had to experience these things. The world is small for our generation, and the possibilities? Endless. We just have to figure out how to enjoy them the right way. A vacation in Florida shouldn’t be a vacation that focuses on photographs to send to friends who are thousands of miles away. I think our generation needs to adopt a lifestyle of live it first, share it second. Enjoying life is much more important than taking thousands of pictures of it that will live on your phone for the rest of their existence. Memories will last a lifetime, photographs will more than likely get put away to only come back out on rainy days.
Put your phones down, raise your drinks high, and make memories for you and the people around you, not for those who follow you.
