Technology has connected and isolated us more than ever before. You see jokes about it in the funny pages, and then you see it before you in restaurants. We are addicted to our phones, to the dopamine hits that are engineered by multibillion dollar companies to maintain our attention. If our attention revolves around celebrities, we don’t have the bandwidth to concern ourselves with improving our world.

People often feel helpless in their ability to personally better the planet. Educating and teaching critical thinking skills to our youth solves longterm problems, but what can you do? I would argue for something immediate and impactful that we can all start doing today: put down our phones a little more often, and pick them up a little less often. Step away from our constructed virtual reality, and be present.

Technology is powerful, but we can control and utilize it as originally intended—as simply a tool.