This article will not conclude with me telling you how we shouldn’t be using social media and technology as much and how we need to take time to live life. After all, I am writing this on a computer and you are reading it on social media, so it’s a little late for us.

Now vs. Then

As a child that was born in 1996, I am technically considered a “90s kids”, but because I was only 4 years of age when the 90s ended, does it really count? Either way, growing up in that time period meant having a cell phone was not a topic of conversation. This was a time when kids were able to play outside without an iPhone and came home with scraped knees. At this age, if you wanted to know where your friends were, you checked front yards for piles of bikes.

The difference between now and then, is 53% of children receive their first cell phone by the age of six. At this age children should be playing with “play-doh” and learning to color in the lines. In an article written by Sara Jones, she informs the reader that more and more people are using screens as their means of communication.

When it came to bullying, those who had an issue, then you had to deal with it face to face or not at all. There wasn’t any hiding behind a phone screen and creating false accounts. In Everyday Health, Dr. Malika Marshall says, “It used to be that you knew who the schoolyard bully was – everybody knew the child you were supposed to avoid, but with cyberbullying, bullies actually have some anonymity.” Antagonists can spread rumors from behind fake screen names, post anonymously on social media sites like Formspring, or send hurtful messages and pictures from unidentified e-mail addresses. “You don’t necessarily know who is doing the bullying and the intimidating.”

When I began this article, I stated that I would not tell you to quit using social media, and I did not. What I will tell you, is that as the new generation that is going to be making “big changes in the world, maybe we need to take a step back and focus on what is important.