It’s no secret that our generation is hooked on smartphones. Phones have taken over our lives, whether it’s social media, texting or streaming movies during an excessively long lecture; technology is everywhere.

We’re a grim culture that defines our self worth in likes and retweets; somewhere along the line, we forget life happens independent of our handheld devices.

Here’s the thing: people don’t care about what you ate for lunch, your name brand clothes or highly-filtered pictures. Furthermore, people don’t care about the concert you felt the need to record for your followers (the quality is terrible when recorded with a smartphone. If people want to hear the song, they will look it up themselves).

What people do care about is your personality. People care about your social skills; nobody wants to repeat themselves because you were too busy half-listening and scrolling through Facebook. That’s rude. Knock it off.

Older generations complain about our addiction to smartphones, and while every generation has looked down on the previous, it seems they have a point. I know plenty of young adults who would rather look up the weather in an app than look out a window.

My thoughts: be courteous and put your phone away. Imagine you are at the midnight showing of Marvel’s “Infinity War” and the person in front of you is on their phone. The blue light takes over your movie-watching experience and you’re left distracted and irritated.

If you were me, you would probably throw popcorn kernels until they got the hint. Yes, I do that. No, I’m not ashamed.

People spend a large chunk of dough at movie theaters to watch a movie they’ve been waiting months, if not years, to see. Nobody wants their experience diminished because some kid in front of them feels the need to take selfies. Do us all a favor and turn the phone off, like the movie previews suggest.

Above all else, put the phone away for yourself. Don’t diminish your own life experiences by feeling the need to share them with the world.

Take time to look around and smell the roses, rather than snapping an artsy picture with the unoriginal hashtag “#smelltheroses.” I promise you, it’s more gratifying to physically smell the soft aroma of a rose than see a two-dimensional filtered picture with a few likes on it.