If I could re-write Maria von Trapp’s song, “My Favorite Things” in the light of today’s technologically-centered perspective, it would go a little like this:

 Youtube on iPhones and games on the TV,

Netflix on tablet, where no one can see me,

Life on iPods and movies on big screens,

These are a few of my favorite things.

 When the sun comes out,

When I’m feeling lazy,

When I’m feeling sad,

I simply turn on my favorite things,

And I don’t feel so bad.

 Not to be harsh, rather frankly and completely honest, doesn’t this version of “My Favorite Things” paint an accurate picture of what we’re becoming as one of the first teenage generations to emerge from the 21st century? (Not that Maria’s list of comforts was any more beneficial or morally high than the ones I present).

 We are a generation positively and undoubtedly, 100 percent consumed by the technology of our time. Always.

We are always plugged in to some device of this kind or the other, and as we make connection after connection with each other over an Internet that is filled with more and more perversion day by day, we are losing connection with the realistic beauty of the world around us and the people we have in it.

 Blinded. We are always blinded by our eyes that have the ability to reach across this entire planet, see anything and learn anything our hearts desire to know and yet we continue to blind ourselves daily through our abuse of the technological miracle of the Internet.

 Everywhere. These devices, these outlets that we cling to like Gollum to his ring, are everywhere and we are at a point where I seriously doubt we can let go.

 Now of course, you can go ahead and say that the Internet is a place filled with unlimited potential, and argue that there has never been a greater time of human communication and interaction, and that the devices we use to access it are innovative and wonderfully capable of educating and so on and so forth. And I’d tell you that you’re exactly right: the Internet, and the devices by which we access it are filled with unimaginable potential and success.

 But what do we use them for? Ebay? Videos of innocent puppies? Porn? Sex trafficking on Craigslist? Images of violence and glorification of it even?

 How do we communicate? Through innocent text messages, or playful Snapchats?

We are constantly online, no matter what device. How long has it been since you were on your corner of the Internet, and since what you were spending your time on was beneficial to you or anybody around you in any way shape or form?

 I do submit to you that the Internet can be beneficial, but we have taken it, a place that can possibly be filled with awesome knowledge, and we use it in excess to blindly pursue our own selfish pleasures without anyone to tell us to stop.

 How do you spend your time on your screens? How do you spend your time with the entire world at your fingertips? You get 8.5 hours of screen time a day. How do you spend it?

 Furthermore, should we even be spending  a miniscule fraction of the time that we spend on screens daily?

 It’s undeniably cliche and it’s been said a million times before, but we have to unplug. Life is passing us by every second, we use those seconds to just, just what? Catch up on some Netflix? Or do you want something a little more private on a bigger screen?

 We have so much more potential, and we are wasting it on a product of our own selfish creation.

 Next time you turn on a screen, (I guess you’re looking at one right now) think how you could be better spending your time. Don’t watch because there’s nothing else to do.  Watch so you can discover new ways to live life.