When I look back on the beginning of my college career, I often question why I decided to live on campus.

After my first year, I could have lived in an apartment or at one of my parents’ house. Perhaps I enjoyed the benefits of a meal plan; perhaps I didn’t want to deal with noisy neighbors and have to worry about dropping the hammer on them. There are a myriad of reasons I could think of, but one thing is for certain: it wasn’t to weakly attempt to socialize with individuals who seem less and less interested in face-to-face contact. As a generation, we’ve bitten greedily into the Apple that has opened a proverbial Pandora’s Box of problems.

I had recently been introduced to the #Firstworldproblems Twitter page.

At the time, I thought nothing of its greater implications and laughed at the ridiculous things people in well-off countries complain about.

But then I took a step back and dug a little deeper. I realized that people not wanting to socialize with each other because they’re too preoccupied with their phones speaks to a much larger problem within our generation. Whether it comes from being spoiled as a child or from the general culture shock of having to talk face to face for longer than five minutes about something, we have a problem with technology.

This led me to conclude that either our generation is very cognizant of our lack of perspective and addiction to technology. We are in touch with it so intimately that we can transcend its seriousness through humor, or that the existence of #Firstworldproblems represents an irony so blatant, it’s almost sad.

I’ve seen the issue in other areas of our society as well. Namely, in the people who cried out in anguish when they couldn’t download iOS7 immediately. It’s easy to lose perspective about how good our lives are. I’m not trying to speak for everyone, because many people who go to the University had to work very hard to get where they are. However, I’m willing to bet next to none of us are wondering where our next meal is coming from. All of this troubles me because as we move into the phase of our lives where many people are starting families, we’re in danger of passing this same attitude on to our children.

If this happens, then maybe the conspiracy theorists who postulate that American society is on the brink of becoming an authoritarian dystopia inhabited by mindless, fearful, complicit nincompoops won’t seem so crazy anymore. And maybe they’ll finally feel the need to get off Reddit and run for political office. We have a lot of advantages and despite our problems as a generation, we also have great potential to make the world a better place. Let’s not throw it away because that next level of Candy Crush is so enticing.