I know that as an American teenager, I should be exhilarated by the rate at which technology is moving. But, while I’m certainly impressed with the speed at which it’s progressing, I don’t know if exhilarated is necessarily the right word. Overwhelmed and perhaps, slightly concerned, would be more accurate.

Don’t get me wrong, I love tweeting about the random thoughts that pop into my head. I love keeping up with people on Facebook that I don’t get to see that often. I even love the way the cursor on the Mac turns into a spinning beach ball when waiting for something to load. But recently, it’s just gotten to be a bit much.

Technology is supposed to simplify our lives, but it’s only made them more complicated. When we’re sitting in the car, we can’t just be content listening to the radio or admiring the trees outside. Instead, there is pressure to tweet about that song that came on the radio. Then, once on Twitter, there is the need to scroll through and read everything that’s been tweeted in the past 7 or 8 eight hours just in case we may happen upon a quote or a funny saying that could change our lives or make our day. Any time we spend just relaxing becomes time wasted because there is such a vast myriad of other things we could be doing. It has become so that if we’re not multi-tasking, we’re not being productive. This only adds to our stress, rather than minimizing it.

Once we become so attached to technology, we can no longer function outside of it. Maybe I’m just abnormal, but I can’t be alone in thinking there’s something wrong with this picture: when, while out to dinner with friends, conversation suddenly ceases to a halt because everyone has their smart phones out. It’s disturbing that a Draw Something or Scramble with Friends game is considered more important than the people sitting right in front of us. Our social skills cannot be that stunted that we can’t carry on a conversation without whipping out some portable device every five minutes.

The issue is, in our rapidly advancing environment, we need equally advanced technology to keep up. To slow down progress would be to encourage complacency. To refuse to try and keep up with this modernization would be to limit one’s ability to connect with others. I’m not saying we should all boycott the iPhone, though. I’m not saying we should throw out our laptops. I’m just saying that we don’t really need to Instagram the picture of that sunset. It would be just as fulfilling to look at it and admire it.