Since joining the multimedia journalism department here on campus, I often thought about how advanced our technology has came since my childhood.

I see the benefits from our electronic devices and how easy it has made our lives in different aspects.

I learned how to drive a stick shift from watching video clips on YouTube. I was able to meet and communicate with my relatives in Europe for the first time through Facebook. I could video chat with anybody in the world from my smartphone.

We’re in this digital revolution that connected humanity in more ways than one, but at the same time it’s segregating as well as enabling us. I hate to steal lines from movies, but I’m reminded that “with great power come great responsibility” and I don’t think we’re responsible nor developed as society enough to appreciate the wonders of this digital age.

We spend so much time behind our digital monitors, smartphone apps, and social networks. We’re in a sense created a world for our own in this digital frontier that’s excludes us from necessary human interaction which helps us develop better basic social skills.

No longer do kids play outside with their friends after school until the streetlights came on. As soon as the bell rings, they run home from school just to chat with someone online either through social media or gaming device to someone who literally lives right next door.

How can they grow and develop in a way they could consider themselves as responsible adults someday, if they can’t even learn how interact with people face to face?

All’s fair in love and chat rooms, where the conversations tends to be more R rated than PG-13.

The Internet exposes children to more things harmful to them than any actual real life lesson growing up in America today, that’s dangerous.

This world we created, this digital frontier puts a lot of today’s youths in situations like cyber bullying or becoming potential pedophile bait and we as adults are not aggressive enough in monitoring our children’s online activity, which we should.

So long to the time where we actually had time to do something that will ultimately benefit us rather than wasting it on playing a game of Angry Birds.

We bury our faces into whatever device we have in our hands and pay little to no attention at all to our environment with out realizing the consequences.

Too many lives have been lost from texting and driving, which forced some states to rethink their laws. For instance in California, you will ticketed with a stiff fine for being caught driving while on the phone.

Just think about, the time we spend on Facebook or Twitter entertaining our “so-called” friends online or vice versa could have been time learning a new language or develop a new way to transport matter. I know that last comment was a bit too far fetched at the moment, but we could be doing something. Anything is better than wasting our energy on social media that is in many ways non-benefical in most cases.

Here we are in society where I can present myself as anyone I want to be. All I have to do is fill out this “bio section” on this “about me” page and post up some amusing photos of me doing some fun activities to show I’m an exciting person. Voila, I got myself a date with a girl I met online and I hope to God she looks the same in her profile picture. That’s the world we live in now.

I remember a time where meeting someone online from a dating website was a taboo, now it’s a common norm.

Let’s admit it, we’re not who we say we are online. We have a tendency to exaggerate things from time to time. We even have to flat out lie if it means gaining more notoriety from our peers.

To justify our own existence on this earth, we have to bombard our friends or followers with endless amount of “selfies” pics. I just saw you post a picture up of yourself a minute ago; do I really need to see another one of you?

This world we created, the world that nothing else matters but our self-glorification is in retrospect a very small world.

All you have to do is think of the Internet as the universe that all our worlds are a part of. I don’t know about you, but I want to explore this new frontier as much as anyone.

But in order to do that, we must step out of our world and see the universe for what it is, a global community. What better way to be a part of this global community than to actually be a part of a community in real-time by living life first.

Our updates and tweets are no different than stars. Just mere glimpses into the past that helps us navigate that great wonderful ocean called life.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving this digital age we’re in, but we have to work out a few of its kinks first.