If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then I am a word billionaire. I have saved so many pictures on my computer that if someone were to look through my portfolio, they would be able to relive almost every moment of my teenage years.
However, when I look at all the files of memories I have saved to my desktop, I realize the amount of time that I have wasted trying to get just the right picture or the perfect video at one of those events. Instead of enjoying these moments, I, like many other teenagers, was too caught up in capturing them.
It seems our generation has become more interested in documenting and broadcasting our lives than actually enjoying them. We will take any photo or video, whether it be a group shot at a party or a video of a cat purring, and upload it to cyberspace just to prove we are doing something with our lives.
Big tech companies know that we are a generation addicted to collecting, storing and sharing data with the world. At the International Consumer Electronics Show, the world’s largest tech show, companies mainly marketed smartphones for their camera quality. People increasingly want to capture their lives in HD and share it with people at the same high quality level.
I have seen this happen many times at concerts, where the crowd is just a sea of people who are holding up smartphones and swaying in sync, recording and capturing the moment rather than enjoying it. It doesn’t matter whether I’m at a small venue in San Francisco or at Levi’s Stadium––the same thing happens at both places. In the last four years I have been to more than 25 concerts, and I’ve noticed the same pattern every time: Squealing teenagers, young adults, and the occasional super-tech adult will have their phones or cameras up documenting the entire concert to save for another time.
Admittedly, I am just as guilty as every other photo fanatic. I have entire concerts recorded on my computer and thousands upon thousands of photos on which I almost never look back. I regret some of the unnecessary time I spent worrying about whether I was jumping too much or if the lighting made the singers appear dark in the picture. I have spent hundreds of dollars to stand in line for hours and wait to take the perfect Instagram picture, which I now realize has been a huge waste of my time.
My own photo obsession doesn’t even compare to what I see when I walk through the hallways at school. When the bell rings for break or lunch, I see students checking their Snapchats and Instagrams to find out if their friends have recently updated a photo of themselves in their last class. I see people taking selfies up and down the hallway to send to their friend who is at the other end of the hallway.
When I see people who are more concerned about noting each moment of their lives than enjoying what they are doing, I am worried. The precious moments we waste behind a camera are moments we can’t get back.
In the future when we look back at our younger years, do we want to remember a youth of pictures, recording and documenting?
If we want to remember the best parts of our youth, we can do it without the aid of a camera––which means we should put our phones down every once in a while! Going outside and enjoying nature’s beauty or watching a concert without bringing your phone or talking with someone in person can propel our generation in a positive direction. Spending quality time with family and friends is more important than worrying about capturing all of those quality moments.
