Life isn’t lived on a 5-inch screen

Life isn’t lived on a 5-inch screen

Look around. Odds are someone is on their smartphone tweeting, on Instagram or Facebook, letting life pass them by. Sadly, this is the unfortunate truth faced with the fascination of our phones today.

Since the first iPhone came out in the summer of 2007, a staggering trend has begun to develop especially in today’s teens. We love our smartphones, the better, more efficient they get, the more we obsess. Addicting apps like Candy Crush and QuizUp keep us glued to the phones and so do the seven other social media apps ranging from Twitter to Vine.

We are all at fault. The stereotypes about this generation being controlled by our smartphones is true. The phones dominate us. I came to this realization after seeing the movie “The Internship” starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson who play two guys in their mid-40s who don’t know a thing about modern technology, yet land an internship at Google. There they meet college technology “geeks” who their whole lives are centered on technology and their phones. Vaughn and Wilson open their eyes to life outside of the web and that the whole underlying theme is that too many kids these days aren’t enjoying the things that make life great and instead are too worried what their friends are tweeting about.

At the end of the day, smartphones will continue to become a bigger part of our lives. But we cannot forget about the simpler things that make living great. I’m not saying ditch the whole phone thing together; technology has opened humans to a new world of innovation and understanding. But if you don’t look up and look around every once and awhile, life is going to pass you by.

Luke Domask

Glen Ellyn