Lawn trees are no longer judged by beauty but rather by how well they compare to the neighbor’s. Looking around, driveways are occupied by a BMW, a Mercedes, or a Lexus, although the inside of these houses are often quite unfurnished. Nowadays nature is becoming an endangered species. As population increases, the amount of trees and animals decrease. Finding 5 frogs a day in the pool over the summer used to be a common thing, now its rare to find even one a week. Where a field or forest once stood is now land occupied by a strip mall or shopping center. As for winter, it never seems to quite arrive here. No matter what the weather, freshly painted toenails, pierced belly buttons, and tans with a tint of orange never seem to fade away.

Personality is becoming more and more of a minor aspect when judging or deciding to like someone. A “hotness” rate over rules a character rate. Looks over friendliness, style over kindness, popularity over compassion. Designer jeans are no longer just a fashion statement, but also a badge of honor. Age seems a confusing factor in the lives of children as well as adults. Fourteen, seemingly nineteen, year olds strut the school halls in ten-inch heels and bottoms that barely qualify as skirts. While fifty, dressing like twenty, year old moms walk around in similar clothing with leopard or cheetah print everywhere visible on them as they leave the nail salon, wearing fifty dollar tips as long as their fingers themselves, on their way to their facialists.

People seem like characters in a cartoon or video game, never stopping and never slowing down. Kids go from school, to the student council meeting, to soccer practice, and home to do their seemingly never-ending homework. Moms fly from Wegmans to get their kids from school and bring them to all of these places in their super mini-vans and arrive home in just enough time to prepare, a more often then not, purchased, family meal. Dads are up and out early, driving to jobs that are minutes to hours away. By nine o’clock a.m., the streets are already packed with people anxious to start and end their busy days. Cars and buses all wiz by in a blur with no time to spare. Twenty-four hours in a day seems like no time at all, washing away in what feels like minutes. Car horns and engines are heard all hours of the day and night, a never-ending cycle.

The worst part of it all is the choice of technology over the real world. People have six hundred and thirty-two friends, yet they are lonely. They consider the media of Facebook, and Instagram, and Twitter to be social, though it is anything but. We have become consumed by these devices as an effort to feel included, but in reality, when we open our computers, we also have the habit of shutting our doors. People have become slaves to the technology that they mastered. It is more important to be “liked” on Instagram than to be liked in person. All that these websites do is promote self-interest, self-image, self-promotion. Spending time with friends is no longer important when a group message will do. We post tweets and pictures with captions that exaggerate our happiness, but we don’t even know if anyone is listening. Even toddlers are no longer entertained by simply their dolls or train sets. They cry and complain until you hand them their IPad and they finally sit in the corner quietly playing their “inter-active” games. It is not a question that technology has us wrapped around its finger. The world is filled with Smart Phones and dumb people.

Our entire existence is heading down hill. People don’t know how to dress, what to spend their money on, or what to spend their time on. The world around us is never the same. From nature to innovation. From personality to appearance. From giving people your love to giving them your “like”. People no longer know what is important so they focus on all of the things that aren’t. Only we can change our ways and get back on track and only we can figure out the way to do it. To find the answer we have to work together; Googling a solution to our problems is not an option.