A few months back, I was sitting in the bleachers at a Link Crew assembly, surrounded by hundreds of highly impressionable, wide eyed freshmen, when I noticed five faculty members who were more enthralled with their phones or iPads than the fellow staff member who was speaking. Of course, teachers are not the only ones with a phone attachment problem.

Walking around the Northgate campus at lunch, I am likely to see more students listening to music or keeping up with their Snapchat streaks than socializing with the friends sitting right beside them. With the recent release of the iPhone X and the obvious signs that cell-phone popularity is far from declining, I often wonder how much further the love people feel for their cell-phones can reach.

The average person checks their phone 47 times a day, according to an article published in The New York Times. TIME Magazine stated that Americans check their phones 8 billion times a day. Another shocking statistic from the website Daily Infographic revealed that 50% of people feel uneasy when they leave their phones at home. As growing dependence on smartphones emerges, people are beginning to spend more time with their devices than other human beings.

But smartphones are not only interfering with our social etiquette. Americans check their phones so frequently that many people are now calling cell-phone love an addiction, and scientists are uncovering negative health benefits for people constantly staring at a screen.

Cell phones emit a form of electromagnetic radiation that is absorbed by tissues close to the phone. Whether cell-phone use directly correlates to increased risk of cancer is unproven but the possibility is worrisome. Being the first generation to grow up with advanced cellular technology, young people today and the generations to come are objects of concern.

I admit that I also have a tendency to spend too much time staring at a screen, but I am increasingly becoming aware of how large the cell-phone issue has become. Despite the multitude of positive advancements that smartphones have brought to our society, I sometimes wish my generation was not defined by a silly, little electronic device. I wish my friends didn’t partake in conversations with one earbud in, and that the pressures of creating an image on social media would disappear.

In my opinion, cell-phone technology has simultaneously brought our world closer together and tore us further apart. Perhaps human beings would be more appreciative of their community and surroundings, if smartphones did not exist.

On that note, the next time you pick up your cellphone for the 48th time in a day to check how many likes you received on that one Instagram post, just think about how you’ve diminished your world from the infinite possibilities of all the people and wonders around you, shrinking your attention, and pleasure, to a mere five-inch screen.