Social media apps in an app folder The Xavierite
When I was serving a table in the dining room I work at, I noticed all of the adults seated around the table, engaged in conversation with one another.
At the same table were three young children, all well under the age of thirteen, each with an iPad in hand and a game displayed on each screen.
The children hardly looked up from their screens the entire time I served them, even as they ate their food.
I remember being those children’s ages and being just as glued to my iPod Touch; however, the only difference was that I was not allowed to use mine at all if we were out to dinner.
Children nowadays have the world at their fingertips, but it is no news to anybody that the Internet has its downsides, particularly in young and growing minds.
As for my generation, we, too, grew up in the age of social media. I got my first iPod Touch at the age of seven, and you couldn’t pry me away from it with a crowbar for years.
In hindsight, I don’t know if it was such a good idea for me and my peers to be glued to our devices from such a young age.
I notice a trend as I go out in the world and exist among people my own age: During times of awkward silence, we turn to our phones and our attention is immediately shifted from the room and people around us to the completely separate world that is within the small devices we carry in our pockets.
It is at times difficult to hold conversations during class discussions with my classmates without one of us scrolling on our feed or typing on our computers the moment the conversation begins to die down.
Why can’t we just be still in the presence of one another? Could this habit of filling awkward silence and moments of boredom with screen time be hindering us from developing proper social skills?
I hear countless stories from my parents about how they were always out with friends growing up and practically never home, whereas I remember spending a decent portion of my summers as a child indoors watching YouTube.
Others my age talk about how their younger siblings don’t ever play outside with their friends; instead, they sit inside and play video games together.
Kids and many young adults alike do not know a world without constant access to the Internet, and I can’t help but wonder if this has prevented us from being fully present in any room we’ve ever been in.
I went on a retreat for three days during my senior year of high school, one where we were not allowed to have our phones. It was nothing short of bliss to not have a bright screen sucking the dopamine from my brain or diverting my attention away from the present moment.
Never before this retreat or since did I ever feel so attuned to the people around me or such a true sense of oneness with other humans.
It was quite eye opening to be with a group of 30 other boys my age with no phones to distract us. I conversed with people I never thought I would speak to and can honestly say I felt a sense of connection with all the guys on that trip, regardless of the differences I initially thought we had.
The Internet is like a world of its own, separate from our physical, real lives. It is not real life, nor is it what we should make life all about.
Seeing how a good amount of people in my age group treat social media has shown me how wrapped up people can become in romanticizing their public personas.
What so many fail to realize is that social media is not, and will never be, real life. On these sites, we only see the highlights of people’s lives, what they deem to be worthy of posting.
We do not see people’s struggles and shortcomings, because we tend not to brag about those sorts of things. People generally post only their best outfits, on their best hair days, when they look their very best.
With social media being so prominent in our lives today, especially as young people, we almost feel like we have to look and be perfect all of the time.
It is imperative to remember that we as humans are imperfect by nature, and to be perfect is to be non-human.
It is also important to limit our screen time, particularly on social media platforms, in order to not fall into this trap of chasing perfection, a dangerous journey nobody has ever completed.