I was born into a time where people’s lives revolve around technology. Whether it be a cell phone, a television, a video game, or a computer, people are always engaging with technology. According to adults, kids “have it easy” and “don’t know how to look something up in a dictionary or encyclopedia.” This may be true for some people, but the fact is technology is taking over the world we live in and has put resources like dictionaries and encyclopedias out of date. Although technology has extreme benefits with access to nearly anything at the touch of a screen, it also has its negatives.

I was never really into video games and I was not a “gamer” growing up. The majority of my friends would play video games, but I was not a fan of them. Last year the breakout of the game “Fortnite” sent all gamers into a frenzy.  Fortnite is an online game where there are 100 players who fight each other until there is one winner.  There are around one hundred million Fortnite players worldwide.  All of my friends immediately dove head first into this game. I figured that the game would last for a few weeks or a month and then all of my friends would stop playing. Little did I know, people would be playing this game throughout my entire senior year of high school.

It came to the point where when a text popped up in the group chat, it said “who wants to play Fortnite” instead of “who wants to get food” or “who wants to go to the beach.”  I was really bothered by this because I have always been told that your senior year of high school is where you make really close relationships with your best friends. I felt this video game was taking valuable time away from me being with my friends. When I would approach my friends about the game and tell them how it is taking extraordinary amounts of time away from us being with each other, they typically had two responses. The first response was “you don’t play the game, so you don’t know what it’s like.” The second response was “we play online with each other and talk online so we are basically still together.”

Towards the second semester of the school year, my friends all decided to not play Fortnite as much as they used to. We began hanging out together as a group rather than just “talking online.” They realized how much time they had spent playing video games and how little time we had left with each other. Not only did my friends stop playing as much Fortnite, but we would all make sure that we went out and did things that did not revolve around video games or our cell phones. We started going to the beach, going to the gym, playing pick-up basketball, and going out to eat.

Technology has many benefits that we take for granted, but it can also have a negative connotation. Especially when it comes to cell phones and video games, technology can be used excessively.  As a society, we must become less dependent on technology.  We need to find a balance between using technology and being social.