You turn on your computer, you click on your favorite browser, your fingers immediately start typing in “Gmail” and before you know it, you’re looking at a cluster of messages that have flooded your inbox from professors, potential employers and retail stores that want your money. After sorting through your emails, figuring out which to reply to, delete or simply to ignore, you open up a new tab. It has become almost compulsive — before you know it, your fingers are quickly typing the beginning letters to “Facebook.” After all, how long can you really go without seeing if anyone has posted any photos of this past weekend or sent you a link to a funny video? Then you either close Facebook or you simply open another tab to check your Twitter or your Tumblr or your many other portals of social media. Simply put, you can’t deny it — we are Internet addicted.

We can easily blame our computers for being the culprit behind this obsession, but that wouldn’t be fair. After all, the majority of our generation has a smart phone at its disposal in the United States, so whenever we close out of Facebook on our laptops, we can quickly open it again on our phones. Despite the undeniable convenience of these devices, I can’t help but wonder if they start to take away from other aspects of life? 

I’m not going to pretend like I’m not someone who consistently has their phone attached to their hip, because I do. I’m the person that you can call, text or email at just about any time of the day and I’ll most likely respond within 30 minutes. Though I’d like to think that these practices are good preparation for the real world, I also think that it leaves little to be desired as far as social improvements go. Haven’t we all been hanging out with friends and you’re trying to tell a story and can’t help but notice that your friend seems to think that someone’s tweets are more important than listening? Or perhaps you are trying to watch a television show and your friend is too busy browsing Instagram to pay attention to what is going on. Then your friend begins to ask questions about what is happening and you have to exercise all of your self-control to not go all Naomi Campbell on them. 

The fact of the matter is that we all do it — we are all victims of this obsession. We always have to know what is going on with our friends, our enemies and even our favorite celebrities. Technology allows us to utilize social media by peering into the life of every person that we know or might have possibly come in contact with. 

In fact, I think that people are starting to use technology as a way to replace human contact. Why speak to someone in person when you can efficiently text them to find out what they are up to? After all, the beauty of texting is that you can do multiple things at once including holding conversations with a myriad of friends while tweeting, doing homework and watching television. Why see them when you can just look at photos of them on Facebook? Our handy dandy smart phones have done nothing more than cope to our ever-growing laziness. 

But what are we to do? We need the Internet for school and work. There is really no sane way to completely cut it out of our lives. Test yourself and see what end of the dependence spectrum you are. Enjoy the nice weather and occasionally leave your smart phone or computer at home. However, if you don’t think that you can do that because you are someone who cannot go more than five minutes without checking your text messages before you get the shakes, you may need to re-evaluate your priorities.