Dear Knights,

Congratulations! You have won an all expense paid trip to the beach for a week during the summer! You’ll be staying in a five star hotel right on the beach and can take one guest with you. The only catch is that no one can have any phones, cameras, or electronic devices!

Do you want to go?

Seems like a silly question, of course I would go – but nowadays people are so obsessed with taking pictures and videos while on a vacation that they only experience it by looking through their phone camera.

Every proud mother wants to take a video of her daughter’s first ballet performance, so she focuses the camera in on her child and watches her dance around the stage through a 3 centimeter-wide circle. Yes, the memory will be in the camera’s memory as wide screen, but in the mother’s mind, her daughter’s first performance is through a tiny circle.

Teenagers do the same thing. I often find myself doing it as well that when I’m at a concert, videotaping my favorite song and watching it through my phone instead of putting the phone away and experiencing the moment while it’s happening. Instead of dancing and singing along to the artist, I stand still holding my phone to make sure I get a good quality shot.

Or, when I hang out with friends, we say, “We need to take a picture so I can post it on Instagram.” While hanging out with friends or at a party, many teenage girls are simply thinking about which picture to Instagram or tweet or put in their Snapchat story. If they deny it, then there’s a good chance they’re lying.

It has become so natural for teenagers to constantly be thinking of social media that we now do it subconsciously.

We are the Selfie Generation. We are known for taking photos all the time. And it’s not a bad thing to take selfies or videos and post on Instagram, but it has gotten to the point that people will only view their friends through camera lenses because so many pictures are taken.

Everyone wants to capture the moment and remember it forever, but when you only see the trees through the lenses, you lose sight of the whole forest.

Sincerely,

Siena