As the first place winner of the high school poetry contest shuffled timidly up to the podium, you could tell that the optically inclined senior would rather be anywhere but the Harford County Public Schools Central Administration Building. He was tall, slim; he looked more like a nicely dressed bean stalk than a recognized poet. He approached the mic hesitantly, watching the audience carefully for any signs of judgment. The boy’s eyes landed on two individuals seated directly in front of him – his parents. I mean sure they may have been fumbling over their cell phones, struggling to capture a low-quality video of their son’s performance, but hey… They were there. Weren’t they? Ok, they may have missed the part where their only child looked up in admiration as he alluded to his two most influential role models, but that’s alright, right? Mom and Dad should catch that, when they rewatch their son look down in disappointment as he continues to read, on their IPhone screens, later that night. Shouldn’t they? Will they be able to feel their child’s unconditional love and his thank you, that he had spent carefully planned hours constructing into a beautiful work of literature, through an emotionless electronic device?

The problem here is not that this boy’s parents failed to truly listen to their son, the problem here is that through their misguided sense of responsibility to “save for the future,” they ended up missing out on the chance to live in and appreciate the moment – a moment their soon-to-be-graduating, almost-adult child had prepared a great deal for. Just for them.

This happens a great deal of times in the world we claim to be living in today. We think we are doing what’s best by capturing the moment, preserving the memory, and holding onto the past. We are so sure that we are taking the proper steps towards keeping peace and order among ourselves by doing this that we don’t even think to stop and ask if it’s really worth it. We’ve become so obsessed with recording our lives — to relive it later and receive “likes” and “followers” — that we’re not really living in the present anymore.

Eating out with friends or family now calls for Instagramming meals, while watching the premiere of a favorite TV-show now consists of reviewing live-tweets from its cast members. We’re so involved in this race to technologically capture everything that’s going on around us that we’re missing the very essence of our many experiences.

The average 18 to 64 year old American will spend about 3.2 hours per day on social networking sites alone. That’s equivalent to almost 50 FULL DAYS of social networking a year!

While I, too, have been a part of this tech-obsessed madness, I’ve recently forced myself to take a step back and ask: What ever happened to being in the moment?

Whatever happened to just watching and/or experiencing, a beautiful sunrise, a conversation over lunch, a friendly hangout with an old classmate? What do we really gain from telling the digital world what we aren’t actually, in the moment, doing?

Our phone obsession isn’t just limited to grandiose, super important events either; it fills every second of every day.

Scrolling through the blog of your choice on your smartphone while walking down the street, you can hear the stories of whoever has something you deem worth listening to. But as you’re sharing a photo and posting your thoughts about some interesting, self-obsessed, or self-tormented character you found on the internet, you’re ignoring the people around you who have their own unique stories to tell.

Observe your surroundings. Make eye contact. Have an actual face to face conversation with someone where the only poor connection you have to worry about is whether or not she’ll agree to a second date. Go out into the world without having to record every single moment of the life you aren’t truly living. Yes, recording things and saving memories is great and all, but what’s the point if you aren’t really experiencing the moment for all it is meant to be?

So, next time you’re fumbling for your electronic devise, frantically trying to take a picture or a video of what, in the moment, you feel will be the best Snapchat or Instagram post, just remember: When you’re 100 years old, looking back on your life and all of your achievements, you’re probably not going to reminisce by scrolling through every 140-character message you ever tweeted or by rewatching your most-liked Vine videos. You’ll probably sit and reflect on your fondest memories. But if your memories are only of events that happened in your peripheral vision, you’ll wish you had put your phone down and experienced moments while you had them and when they were more than just a background for your home screen.