A loud lunch room surrounds you, friends talking at both sides of your head. You’re on your phone, quiet, trying to pay attention, but seemingly uninterested. This happens all the time.

Glance up, look down. The girls to your left laugh obnoxiously, messing with their own hair. The two girls to your right are talking to the people on the other side of the table. The boy in front of you interacts with both sides, and you sit. Quiet and alone.

So often are people sitting in groups, among friends, with their phones in hand, quiet. They are in a world of their own rather than being joined in ours, only existing on the outskirts. Of course there’s the occasional few words passed between the four of them, no, three. But who is the one at fault? Which people are to blame for the lack of communication and face-to-face contact within the new generation; within the technologically advanced young adults who are losing forms of interaction? Who are we to blame?

Is it the adults who have led us to these advances that quite often help us out of a jam and keep us entertained, or the people who are suffering because of their use? The people who make the choice to sit within a group but isolated? Is it a choice, or is it thrust upon them, leaving them with no other option so as to not feel left out?

The world has become so involved with what’s going on in front of their face in another place that they haven’t had the opportunity to experience what is really going on around them. The world around them, buzzing with conversation rather than with alerts. The world around them, loud and obnoxious, but filled with life rather than with screen grabs and computer chips that can only chill your bones and dull your conversations to be held aloud.