One day a couple years ago, I sat bored out of my mind during a blackout with no laptop, phone dead and nothing to do. I realized whatever someone chooses to do during a blackout tells so much about them. What would you do if you had no technology to distract you? Would you sing? Would you write? I picked up my guitar, recalling middle school when I practiced three hours a day and could play Red Hot Chili Peppers songs all the way through. Nowadays, all that remain are the intros of those songs. I wondered how much better I would be at guitar if I devoted even half the time I spend watching screens to practicing. I realized modern technology has created a truly digital world that separates you from reality.

I attended a speech at Northwestern in October by children’s psychiatrist Dr. Bruce D. Perry, who explained how a poverty of relationships and an increase of screen usage in the first three years of a child’s life is “disrespectful to our own biology.” He said a lack of stable relationships in infants’ first three years can create “18-year-olds with the social and emotional skills of 6-year-olds” and this problem is exacerbated with the increased use of screens. Phones, TVs and computers are consuming people’s lives, and it now affects the way we interact.

How often do you look around your group of good friends and see all of them looking at their phones? How often do you have to stop a conversation to text someone? Sometimes I have trouble paying complete attention to someone talking because I have a few texts that interest me. I wonder how hard is it to devote your full attention to someone for a conversation instead of interrupting them so you can send a text. Phones prevent us from living in the moment and pull us into a digital world that is ultimately not real. There is no comparison to meeting an exciting new person on the street or meeting an interesting person in class to a Tinder match. Technology has diluted human communication to the point that some people would rather meet a new friend on Facebook rather than on the bus.

Electronic musician Bassnectar often asks audience members to keep their phones in their pockets when he performs live. He urges his fans to resist recording or photographing his performance to create a wholesome experience to be enjoyed by only those in attendance that night. This creates a memory only you possess, and no digital entity is able to taint it.

Snapchat is a hugely popular app in today’s world. I love using it to take pictures of clouds or anything else I think is beautiful. I totally encourage the idea of documenting our lives so we can look back on them and see what we were doing or thinking. Although, this idea is poisoned by the ephemeral characteristic of Snapchat. Because Snapchats disappear the instant we send them, pictures taken via Snapchat are not an effective way of documenting memories for personal reflection. Snapchat has become a crutch a lot of people lean on that ensures everyone knows you’re having a good or bad day. A lot of days I don’t know why I feel the need to ‘Snapchat’ the new music I found, but do I really need to let everyone think I listen to cool music?

Recently I read an editorial in the Chicago Tribune in which a man in his 20s commented on his generation as a whole. He explained how our generation, the Millennials, is spoiled with attention by ideas like trophies given out for participation, yet we ultimately don’t have a lot of confidence in ourselves. I urge everyone to stray away from using social networks as a way to gain gratification for their actions.

We should be confident enough ourselves to be content with our actions even if we are the only ones who know about them. Instead of constantly sharing our lives via technology, we should spend more time reaching out to the people we truly care about and develop a genuine connection — independent of the digital world.

Pedro Acosta is a Medill freshman. He can be reached at [email protected]. If you want to respond publicly to this column, send a letter to the editor to [email protected].