Living sans iPhone at Madison High School can take a social toll on a person. You’re automatically exiled from “group chats,” banned from “Snapchatting” and incapable of tweeting at any given moment. People assume that, without an iPhone, you’re at a disadvantage. The idea of tweeting from a real computer is laughable, and people are surprised when you pull an “old-fashioned” keyboard phone out of your back pocket.

Call me crazy though, but I kind of like life without an iPhone.

In today’s world, many feel the need to document their every action. Critics of Twitter and Facebook repeat the mantra, “I don’t care what you ate for dinner.” This may seem like ridiculous abuse of social media, but simply log on to Instagram and you’ll be met by more than one artsy picture of a photogenic meal. In addition to that, virtually every day on the week on Instagram is devoted to a different “theme,” from pictures of events in the past to people who you may be crushing on. As if pictures of food and and teenage “selfies” aren’t enough, the users of Instagram have created these new events as an excuse for promoting themselves. With this compulsive documentation, comes great danger. People develop “iPhone addiction.”

They cannot put down their treasured devices. Like the green light to Gatsby, true personal fulfillment from virtual interaction on an iPhone is easily desirable, but hard to come by. There are so many games to play, messages to read, and apps to check on, that reality is often left behind. While most people do not suffer extreme iPhone addiction, I frequently hold conversations with people while they’re texting or tweeting or playing games. To be fair, I’ve texted on my old-fashioned phone while I was with others too. However, the iPhone has a gripping effect on its users. While my technological obsession is limited to texting, the virtual social experience for someone with an iPhone is much broader.

Yes, some of the time using an iPhone can enhance the social experience, such as with apps like Yelp. However, the number of apps that relate to social networks and virtual interaction is much larger. The iPhone isn’t the whole problem, though. It merely acts as a tool to let us talk less and tweet more. Albert Einstein warned, “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”

But I’m not one to talk. I’m waiting for the iPhone 6 to come out, and then I will finally be converted to iPhone-ism.