This past weekend my family and I went out to dinner, and I was shocked with what I saw. Instead of the constant low chatter that restaurants usually have, this restaurant was almost completely silent! I looked around and noticed that almost all the guests were engrossed in their cell phones. They weren’t even paying attention to the people they were sitting with. But doesn’t that ruin the whole point of going to a restaurant?? You’re supposed to TALK to the people you’re eating with, not to virtual people on a phone!

I know. Phones are amazing. They’re like little pockets of sunshine that hold all the information in the world. You can text someone who is all the way in Japan and get a response immediately. But I feel people are starting to abuse the power of phones. I see kids at school in the morning before classes start stand against a wall, watching YouTube videos or scrolling through social media. They don’t even bother to talk to their friends who are right beside them! By doing this, by disconnecting yourself from in-the-flesh people and looking at some celebrity’s photoshopped life on Instagram, you lose your grip on reality. You begin to forfeit your true, tangible relationships with people for online “friends” that you’ll probably never meet in your life.

We don’t even realize the massive amount of time we actually spend on them. I checked my battery usage for Instagram, and according to that I had been using the app for 4 hours that day! I wasted so much of my life scrolling through pictures of other people’s lives when I could have been doing something so much more useful with my OWN life, like studying for math (lol) or hanging out with friends.

I believe we should minimize our time on our phones. Not only will it give us more opportunities to talk to real people and establish long lasting relationships, but it will also give us a chance to get our butts off our chairs and move around. Exercise is something we are all lacking these days, and cell phone addictions are a major cause to this problem.

The next time you use your phone, ask yourself: do you really need to be using it? Or can I put it down and do something more productive, like go for a jog? At any public place, make a conscious effort to physically talk to your friends and family. It feels so much better socialize with real people than mindlessly text “lol” to someone.

Katie