The other day a friend of mine, another Mercy college student, asked me to come by their hotel room where they dorm off campus. As we rode the shuttle bus from campus to the Hampton Inn, the bus took a back rode that I remember taking just about everyday last semester to and from campus.

I sat by the window and I could see all these big beautiful houses with nice luxury cars parked in the driveways. It was evening, the sun was going down and the sky was filled with all shades of pink, orange, purple and blues; it was gorgeous. Then I thought to myself, how many times did I drive down this road last semester, probably way too many to count.

However many times I drove back and fourth the road, I never noticed the huge houses with lovely landscaping and it just made me wonder how often is it that I, myself, or anyone for that matter, go day to day focusing on only the things in front of us and never take the time to stop and look at the things around us. Something so simple as that nice neighborhood was so relaxing to me and inspired me to one day have a home of my own with such eye-catching beauty.

Where am I going with this? Well, this small epiphany that occurred last week reminded me of this video I came across last year. It is titled “Look Up,” and the video was of a young man citing his poem and including demonstrations of how todays social media has made us ironically less social. The demonstration also has a nice story line to it, but the main point of it is to express the huge concern that every day millions of us dive into the screens of our brightly lit smartphones, and we get stuck in the virtual world of isolation and don’t look up for hours on end.

I recently ran into a friend on campus that I haven’t seen since last semester and as we caught each other up on our summer vacation she mentioned that she deleted all social media network apps from her phone. I started laughing hysterically, but her face remained content; she was serious. When I asked why, she explained that it got to a point where she would be on apps such as Instagram and Twitter for hours just refreshing and scrolling, and it took over her life so she needed a break. She was doing the right thing, and I commended her for it.

Before my cellphone began consuming my life at the age of 13, I was reading a new book about every 2-3 months. Now, the “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy has been the first time I’ve read a book cover to cover in years. Why? Because I get so consumed with this tiny hypnotizing device called a cellphone. Nothing else seems to be more interesting than the refresh button in the top right corner of my hand held life support.

How many assignments or tasks have you put off by simply getting on your favorite social media network and scrolling through the entire feed for about 20 minutes—then realizing there’s 20 more minutes of new content that you haven’t seen—so you refresh the app and repeat the same steps about three more times before you exit and go to the next social media network to do the same thing? If this is not you I tip my hat to you! If it is, then I have included the video titled “Look Up” below in hopes to encourage this technology consumed generation to, well, look up!