This day in age we are very open on public platforms about feelings and events during our day-to-day life. Everyone has that one friend that updates their Twitter with what time they drink their coffee in the morning, or takes a picture of their lunch to post on Instagram. When it comes down to it, Social Media is a recording of our life. As one of the people who avoids posting such personal stuff on platforms such as Facebook, I am at a lost as to why you would want people to know so much about you.

Over Winter Break, at around 4 o’clock in the morning when I had lost hope in any form of sleep for the night I ended up on the black hole that is YouTube. You know how on YouTube each video leads to an unlimited amount of other videos? It seems never-ending. Well that is exactly what happened and before I knew it I was watching a YouTube video of a guy recording his real life BRAIN SURGERY.

It turns out that Charles Trippy, a member of the band We The Kings, has recorded every day of his life for the past 7 years and has posted it as a VLog on YouTube. You follow him through brain cancer, surgeries, seizures, romance, divorce, laughter, and crying in a series of videos that will end up feeling as real as if you were living them yourself. As much as his videos are addicting to watch, watching such honest public videos seems like an invasion of privacy. This raises the question, how much sharing is too much sharing? And beyond that, what is all of this impersonal sharing doing to us as a society?

Ashley Bankhead, an Undergraduate Student here at the University of New England and a member of the Nor’easter News Team said, “I think [social media] has made people have a much harder time effectively communicating with each other in person.” You can watch and experience this in full force while you are walking to class. It did not used to be that you would look away from the person you are passing on the sidewalk. You would not avoid eye contact with Professors when you saw them in public.

Before social media gets too far out of control we need to take a step back and truly think about what it is doing to our lives. I often hear that a Facebook break is the most refreshing way to de-stress. That is why I encourage you to take a week and get off of social media. Focus less on taking the perfect picture to post online, and more on taking in the moment.

And that is what I am going to do. Starting today, January 28th 2016, I will be taking one full week off from all social media. Stay tuned for Taking in the Moment: Part 2 where I will be recapping the experience.