Texan Mosaic

by:ALEX PEREZ/Staff Writer

I’m sure I speak for most social media users when I say that scrolling through an endless stream of food pics, selfies and random posts takes up most of my day.

Whether it be Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest or whatever social outlet you love to get on, they are slowly taking over people’s daily lives. We have all seen the power of social media and how it is affecting people, whether it be for better or worse.

Social media can be a great tool for communicating and connecting with friends, family and other “followers.” But it can also trap you into your Twitter or Facebook timeline until your eyes start to water from looking at a tiny screen for hours on end. Social media is taking over our lives.

I can vaguely remember the time before the iPhone, when I couldn’t send filtered snaps to my best friend or look through my timeline about 100 times a day. Being a patron of today’s society, I fear the day that I accidentally leave my laptop or beloved iPhone at home. I speak for the majority of cell phone users when I say nothing is quite like the fear that strikes when you drop your unprotected phone face down on cement. Most people cringe at the sight, even though the crack that may or may not be there won’t really stop your entire life.

The dependency on cell phones in today’s society is outrageous. Yeah, sure it allows us to connect to multiple sites which do provide informative and important information. But most of what we scroll through on our timelines is just for entertainment purposes. We are constantly sucked into the black hole that we call the Internet. These outlets are taking up so much of our time that instead of it being a convenience for us, it has turned into a daily necessity.

We are turning into Internet zombies, especially when it comes to the daily ritual of walking around with our eyes glued to either a laptop or phone screen. We put so much importance on the usage of our smart phones that we neglect to pay attention to reality at times. I believe that there is a hierarchy of importance, and we put the usage of our phones and social media on a pedestal.

It is now a common thing to wake up and the first thing you do is reach over to grab your cell phone and look through the various social media that you may have. Throughout the day, we have our heads down and inside of our tiny screens that take us away from the world around us. The dependency on phones has skyrocketed in the past couple of years. We are engaged in our phones and laptops more than ever now, and I think it’s partly because of all the credit and worship the Internet gets, as well as the “cool aspect” of any kind of social media.

People are unattached to their reality due to social media and their constant interest in it. The importance that we give to social media poses a threat to so many things, such as driving, and getting an education. All over the news, there are so many stories of people who are too busy taking “stoplight selfies” or updating their status to even pay attention to the road. Deadly car crashes have been caused by someone being on his or her phone and not following basic driving laws, such as looking at the road.

In today’s school systems, at any level, students can be seen pretending to do work when really they are just looking up answers online or not even acknowledging the lesson at all. This is a threat to the intellectual achievement of our future generations. They really aren’t learning. They are just looking up answers that somebody else has worked for, and they didn’t even put thought into anything except a Google search.

Social media and the Internet do have some value to them, such as making it easier to know what is going on around the world with the latest updates. But that also comes with multiple advertisements and stories about nonsense that gets the reader sucked into “news” that doesn’t really matter, along with candy crush notifications or a bogus story about a random person doing something that is obviously fake, but somehow it is “breaking news.”

The Internet has been a blessing and a curse for the world around us. If we continue to heavily depend on social media and the Internet, we will soon become permanently unattached to reality and live a life through profiles.