Have you ever sat down to check your Facebook, told yourself you were just going to take two-minutes at what was going on your online accounts, and end up somehow spending three hours looking at what is going on in your friend’s life, or watching funny cat videos? If the answer is yes, then you would not be alone.

In this day and age, people seem to have forgotten what it was like before living without the constant contact we share with one another. Many people today don’t venture outside their homes or places of work to explore the world, they do not talk to each other face-to-face, and they do not attempt to establish themselves in society. This is a major issue that needs to be addressed and resolved. We cannot continue on like this if we are to survive and thrive as a species.

My brother is a prime example of what someone who is always connected is like. He cannot be found without some form of technology on his person at any given time. Do you want to make a guess where he spends most of his time? In his room, playing video games.

He lives an incredibly sedentary lifestyle, and rarely exercises when baseball season is not in swing. Leading lives like his is absolutely detrimental to society. Sedentary lifestyles that are caused by a major attachment to technology, coupled with high-calorie contented foods, are linked to obesity. Rates of obesity are climbing, effecting massive amounts of people, and can result in death if not managed properly. Depression and anxiety have also been linked to excessive technology usage.

I am not going to ramble on about how we need to destroy all technology and should throw away the internet altogether. That is a ridiculous point to make. The internet is an amazing source of information and a vital instrument in the economy. But we have a serious addiction problem to technology.

Last year, I was challenged by my English teacher over my spring-vacation from school to take a day and disconnect myself from all major forms of technology, like lights, the telephone, the internet, the radio, television, and cars, etc., and see how long I could go without them. The result? I was a much more relaxed and peaceful person! There was no stress from trying to keep up with my social media accounts and  I didn’t care what songs were on the radio or what shows I was missing. I simply sat down with a book or went outside when I was struggling to find something to keep myself busy.

A classmate of mine, Lindsey Martins, also took part in the project, and she found “it was easier to keep away from technology when I was busy, but when I was bored I found it hard to keep away. I thought the project really showed you how addicted you were to technology.” Lindsey’s use of the word “addicted” shows that we are all too connected and need to disconnect.

We need more of the peace that comes from not always being connected to a constant flow of information. This breather allows us to understand ourselves, and to not always be hooked into other people’s problems and negative information from the media. In fact what the public needs to understand is that the most highly abused form of antidepressants are food and technology, and the most underused happens to be exercise and going out into nature!

We need to disconnect from our devices and start to address real-world problems such as our ever increasing environmental problems, poverty issues, terrorism, education and so many more, because without our immediate attention we will be unable to make many if any strides forward in these areas.If we even took half of the time that we waste on social media to apply ourselves to our work we could accomplish so much in terms of improving our society, and our world as a whole.

What we need to do is connect back to nature, get back to each other, and back to ourselves all while disconnecting ourselves from our prison of technology. Go out and enjoy the sunshine, take a walk, a hike, go visit your friend at a real life café instead of a virtual one. Live instead of simply just existing, because there is so much more to life than those ‘likes’ you are trying to get on Instagram, believe me.

The world is an amazing place when you take a moment to look away from your screen and experience it. We should all take a breather from that cat video and go out and experience it sometime.

Editor’s Note: If you’re going to spend all your time on your Smart phone, why not use that time to catch up on what is going on at Holyoke High? Follow The Herald on Twitter @hhsherald, on Facebook at “The Holyoke High Herald,” and on Instagram at “holyokehighherald.”