I’m sitting at dinner with my family along side other groups of family and friends who are all getting something to eat. Sounds great: people spending quality time together, eating food and hanging out. The only issue is, the majority of faces I see are glued to the screens of their phones. People texting, liking photos on Instagram, sending snap chats of the food they’re eating, scrolling through their Facebook newsfeed and even toddlers playing games on their parents phones.

Our generation today is completely addicted to their technological devices, and it only gets worse with each day. It has to stop!

Yes, I own an iPhone. I have an Instagram account, Facebook, Snap chat, Tumblr, etc. No, I’m not one of those people that have been able to get rid of their technology by deleting their social media accounts and attempted to have one of those “technologically free” lives. But I have become aware of how addicted we’ve become to our phones that I am doing my best to use it as little as possible.

And with this issue, awareness is the key.

So many people today do not even realize how much they rely on their phones, or how obsessed they are with them. Ask yourself: Do you think you could live without your phone? How long do you think you could last without your phone?

I have asked handfuls of my friends if they think they could live without their phones, and without even thinking the immediate response is “God no” or “There’s no way.” I’ve also asked how long they think they can go without using their phones and many have admitted that they don’t think they can go even a full twenty-four hours. We have become too dependent on our technological devices to the point that it has impacted us socially.

If you think about yourself or the people in your life, the majority of the photos they take of themselves or of what they are doing are mostly taken for the purpose of being posted to some form of social media whether it be Instagram, Facebook, etc. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to take photos, and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to post on social media, all I’m saying is that has become the sole focus of our actions: posting it somewhere for the rest of the world to see.

One thing that has become so popular today is Snapchat, an application where you take a photo or video and send it to your friends for up to ten seconds. We find it so necessary to share the food we eat, how “hot” we look, what cool activity we are doing, or even who we are hanging out with in a form of social media that lasts up to ten seconds, and then disappears. We have documented so many seconds of our lives where the footage doesn’t even exist anymore! It’s crazy how addicted we’ve become to it. I can’t go to a party without looking around and seeing phones capturing photos or Snapchat stories being uploaded. Again, I’m not saying this isn’t okay (I have a Snapchat too!) but it’s the issue that we feel inclined to document every second of our lives because we feel it’s important for the rest of the world to see what we are doing at all times.

The worst component of this entire topic for me is how people are glued to their phones even while they're surrounded by people. It happens too often where I spend time with a group of friends, or go out to eat with my family, and almost every single person is on their phones. I've recently been asking my family to put their phones away when we are out to eat, and my friends and I even have a rule that when we hang out we put our phones in a pile and don’t touch them. It’s so horrible that we can’t connect with the people that are around us because we are too busy connecting on our devices.

I’ve only become aware of how addicted I became to my phone in the past year or two. But that awareness made me realize the extent to which our society is obsessed with our phones. The fact that people are more comfortable communicating online than they are in person has such a negative effect on social skills. We go on trips, hikes, the beach, or have cool opportunities in general, but too many people aren’t taking in their entire experience because they spend their time texting or checking social media. We are living a false reality through our social media when we make things seem different than they actually are.

We are missing out on so much of the world in front of us because we are living these experiences through our phones. We take photos of what we are doing, and spend time editing them when we could be living in the moment. If you’re reading this article, it’s very likely that you spend more time on your phone than you should. I challenge you to put your phone away for just a short while, and see what it feels like. Facebook, Instagram, Snap Chat, Tumblr, and every other form of social media you use can wait. Enjoy the people you are with when you’re with them. Take in an experience without documenting one moment of it. Look up at the world rather than down at your screen.

Put down your phones and experience the world as it is, because life does not have a Chrome filter on it.