Put it down!
You’re tuning out on life while tuning in to your phone.

Let’s face it, social media isn’t all that important. You shouldn’t care about your ratio or the number of likes you got on your profile picture. It doesn’t matter if you have 4000 Facebook friends or just 40. It doesn’t matter if you have 500 followers or 50. It doesn’t matter if you got 100 likes or 10 favorites or none at all. Who cares? Only you do. That’s the problem, you’re so engulfed in your social media accounts that you’re missing out on life.

Judging people solely based on their social media accounts is unfair. People should not be entirely judged by how funny they are on Twitter or by how many followers they have on Instagram. There’s a lot more to people than social media accounts. People should be judged by their actions instead of the content of a 140-character tweet.

Stop experiencing life through your phone. You’re missing out on the funny voice that your friend is doing if you are too busy taking out your smartphone and putting it on your Snapchat story to show other people that you do, in fact, have friends.

Also, the most common form of saying “hi” to another person should not be via text message or even a Facebook message; it should be done in person. You should say “hi” to people with your mouth, not with your thumbs.  Stop communicating with people through your phone or risk not developing social skills.

The Internet and non face-to-face technology are completely changing how fast information travels from one place to another. This is an amazing feat, the effects of which cannot be overlooked or overstated. The smartphone is a great way to communicate with somebody when you live in different states or even different countries.

However, this doesn’t apply when you’re in the same class sitting 15 feet away from each other.

You are spending way too much time on your phone. The average teenager spends seven and a half hours a day consuming media; this includes watching TV, listening to music, surfing the Web, social networking, and playing video games. The average teenager sleeps for seven hours a night. The average teenager, then, spends 44% of their waking hours consuming this media.

There is no solution to this problem. If you want to live through your phone, there’s nothing anybody can do to stop you. Despite this, you owe it to yourself to go just one day, 24 measly hours, without your cell phone. Just try it. You can do it.

Without your having your cell phone for one day, you will be able to appreciate having actual conversations with people and judging people with your eyes not your smartphone.