Victoria Diana: Consider if we dare to unplug

Groups of people play Pokemon Go in front of the movie theater at Westfield Valencia Town Center in July 2016. KATHARINE LOTZE/Signal.
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I live in a world consumed by technology and social media. People sitting across from each other on a date don’t even look up to have a conversation because they are completely engrossed in the newest tweet coming in from a celebrity they admire.

Girls wake up two hours before they need to just to apply the most-talked- about makeup products and fry their hair with repeated uses of a curling iron.

Boys throwing down pills to get bulkier simply because it’s what everyone else expects them to look like. Someone bullying another over the web because they are hidden behind a screen and they can’t see what it does to the other person.

Our beautiful existence is so precious – and yet we sit behind a computer and watch our lives go by without being an active part of it.

What happened to waving at a neighbor across the street simply because it’s the decent thing to acknowledge life and be kind? Doing that now makes people “freaks” or “strange.”

Why is it that we apply for jobs online instead of walking into the place you want to work and communicating with the manager? What happened to meeting someone in person and establishing a friendship that way?

Today the “friends” I have on Facebook and Twitter are strangers who really have no idea who I am.

Children growing up believe that it is normal that Mommy gives them a tablet with a game just to shut them up for a while instead of rolling around outside with them.

We are a generation of robots, continuously attached to our forms of technology and never looking up and realizing that time has passed. I, too, have fallen victim to the claws of technology and to how many “likes” my photos get or how many followers I have.

I am lucky that I get to have a nice laptop and new phone, but that makes me very unlucky at the same time.

Over the years I see more and more solitude invading my life. Connections I thought I made in high school have frayed and left me alone. The people I thought mattered to me have become insignificant.

The followers I worshiped have not been there for me when I needed someone. I was alone, and that is a frightening thought.

I know being alone in this world isn’t really possible, yet I still feel alone sometimes.

I believe that my ability to communicate is great, but how can I make friends if, when I talk to someone randomly, I look like the biggest whack on the block?

The biggest problem with society is our inability to coexist without screens in front of our faces. What happens if we put down the phone, turn off the television, close the laptop, and exist? Exist in the world and not become a cyber thought or moment.

What if we said hello to someone walking down the street? What if?

Victoria Diana is a freshman at College of the Canyons and a graduate of Saugus High School. She has lived in the Santa Clarita Valley for more than 12 years.

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