At what age did you receive your first smartphone? I am not talking about a brick that played snake or called your family members, but the one with online access. The instant nature of the internet is addicting and beneficial, so we use our digital sources to keep up to date.
If you look around campus, you will notice the bulk of your peers using their phones, even while walking. Commuting dangers aside, technological comfort is so valuable that life without a charged phone seems boring and washed out.
There is nothing wrong with the cybernetic relationships of digital devices, but they have permanently altered our behavior, morals and personal taste. Even with that knowledge, some would rather roll over broken glass naked than go a day without their phone. Reliance on these devices in everyone’s pocket has changed how we exist, both in human behavior and modern society.
Your fellow classmates use their phones constantly. Every day, they need to check emails, online news sources, text messages and even answer the occasional phone call. Each brief update adds to a ludicrous level of screen time that does not include computer use.
We were never built to be stimulated so consistently, leaving current generations flooded with addictive dopamine.
Anderson Cooper of CBS ran a segment on 60 Minutes last December tackling the impact screen time has on brain development. The full report is fascinating, but Tristan Harris, a former Google manager, gave crucial input.
“Your telephone in the 1970s didn’t have a thousand engineers on the other side who were redesigning it to work with other telephones and then updating the way your telephone worked every day to be more and more persuasive,” Harris explained.
Knowing the masses find trending media valuable can be confusing. Taste is shaped by exposure and personal belief, yet a diet of crap leads to horrifying results.
Professional reviewers, radio stations and curated lists have devolved into everyone thinking their uneducated opinion matters. Everyone has the right to voice their opinion, but they should not all have megaphones.
Memes and cynicism can be humorous, yet some take online interaction seriously and wind up emotionally distraught. There is a fine line between stating belief and being an anonymous asshat. 
Roughly half of the global human population is an active internet user. According to the CIA’s World Factbook, over 90 percent of the U.S. population is online.
Browsing websites like InternetLiveStats can be horrifyingly profound, instantly displaying how the internet used each second. Those daily statistics can make one feel insignificant in ways rivaled only by enormous crowds or the vastness of space.
This calls into question how our lives depend on internet functionality, leaving us mentally dependent and less self-reliant.
Our demeanor is becoming molded by digital screens instead of physical interaction. While we are communicating far more often, we can rarely hold direct eye contact without feeling awkward or insecure.
Most cannot imagine life without a phone, but every generation before ours managed just fine.
Ironically, you can barely get anything done without online access. Those applying for jobs need to do so online.
Typing speed is a must and coding proficiency is needed more than ever. Digital chat rooms like message boards, social media and video services expose behaviors rarely performed in public.
An entirely different life emanates from one’s online presence, and most utilize it far more than they know. Anyone would feel far less comfortable around judgmental peers than being shielded by a screen and a pseudonym. Regardless of care, this behavior still seeps into public interaction and future social cues.
Anyone can sugarcoat how dramatically our lives have changed due to rampant technology. We distract ourselves with Netflix, YouTube and oodles of other media services.
Attention and time are worth money, yet we waste an endless number of hours with our devices. We alone determine which content to view, so perhaps auto play is not the best option.
Limiting our exposure to dopamine saves our happiness for more varied use than endlessly scrolling through grandiose feeds.