Has it gone too far?

Are we too obsessed with the lives of others?

Yes… We are. We have gotten to the point where our phones have become a second hand. This may seem dramatic, but social media is taking over our lives. We have a persistent urge to get on our devices and Tweet, Facebook, Snapchat, or Instagram what we do in our daily lives.

My grandma calls this ‘the self absorbed age full of selfies and selfie sticks.’ If you are some how unaware of what a selfie is, it is “an image of oneself taken by oneself using a digital camera especially for posting on social networks” (Merriam Webster). There are people that take way too many pictures of themselves and may be seen as vain and narcissistic. I think I have to agree with her.

In today’s society we have gotten to a point where we have become obsessed with others lives and how many likes we have gotten on a picture we recently uploaded. All members of the social media society have been there, we check our notifications and we let out a sigh because nothing new pops up. Or we frantically check how many likes we have on the new picture we posted to make sure it was more than everyone else’s. But that isn’t reality. You cannot get more likes than everyone else.

Do likes really represent how good of a person you are?

How beautiful you are?

No, it doesn’t. It represents how many people happened to be online at that given moment willing to hit the like button or had the extra time to spend making a comment. So you should never log onto you Facebook or Instagram account and feel bad about yourself due to the amount of likes or comments you have received because, in the long run of things, they honestly mean nothing.

Have you ever gone out with your family, and you’re sitting at the table having a meal when you suddenly realize that everyone has a phone out?  They are checking their texts, or their social media… INSTEAD OF BEING IN THE HERE AND NOW! How crazy is that? My family constantly does it. My sister sits next to me, texting her boyfriend. My dad’s checking Facebook. My Mom seems to be the only innocent one of the lot, yet even she sometimes has her phone out scrolling through Pinterest, looking at the most recent DIY ideas. Even my 3 year old sister has a computer that she takes out to watch videos. Now I sit here writing this and wondering if I’m making my family out to be a horrible set of people, but I know that many families are culprits to this crime, and it needs to be addressed. Can we never get away from technology, not even when we are out for a nice meal, with the people we care so much about?

“Social,” what does this even mean? “Marked by or passed in pleasant companionship with friends or associates,” according to Merriam Webster. Social activities really are becoming less and less ‘social’ by the minute. Social media merely gives us the opportunity to portray the reality we wish others to see. We need to stop trying to make our lives look so perfect and actually work on making them that way. Live in the here and now, for you never know when you will no longer have that moment.

I am not saying that all social media is bad. There is definitely a happy medium where you can connect with friends and family; however, when that begins to interfere with our lives, that’s when it has gone too far.

You have to question yourself; have you gone too far, and if so, what are you going to do about it?