From Angry Birds, to Candy Crush, to Snapchat, apps come and go on the main screen of many smart phones and iPods. They can keep us up late, distract us from lectures, and withdraw us from family gatherings, but sometimes they can bring us closer together.

Unlike other teams here at Bingham, the wrestling team plays Clash of Clans, a game where players are a part of a clan and battle others outside of their own.

“It’s a form of bonding. We also use it as a group message to communicate about practice and getting random stuff out,” said the head coach for Bingham’s wrestling team, Matt Walker.

Almost the entire wrestling team plays this game. Among the few who don’t is Nate Naylor, a senior wrestler at Bingham. He chooses not to play it because he knows it will be addicting, and thinks it’s a waste of time.

“One of our tournament dates changed to an earlier date,” said Nate “Walker just messaged everyone through Clash. I didn’t find out that the tournament had been changed until later.”

Clash of Clans is popular, but the Candy Crush Saga has topped the app charts. In this game, players must switch and match up similar candy pieces to gain a certain amount of points. It is very similar to Bejeweled, another popular matching app game.

Ms. Cheryl Groharing, a math teacher at Bingham, said that she couldn’t say how many hours she has played Candy Crush because she can’t count that high.

Groharing is on level 256. “I’m never getting past the level I’m on. It’s too hard,” said Groharing. There are a total of 485 levels. In this game you have five lives. Once you run out, you can either pay $0.99 or wait a few hours to gain more.

“I’ve paid $0.99 probably five times. But if you go into settings and set your clock ahead a couple of hours, you get all of your lives back,” said Groharing.

Not only do silly games keep us distracted, but social media apps such as Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat can take our attention away.

Snapchat is an app where you can take short videos and pictures and send them to others for up to ten seconds to never be looked at again.

“I can make ugly faces for a few seconds, but it’s the worst when they take a screenshot,” said Abigail Denison, a senior at Bingham.

She has had the app a little over a year and has already sent 26,152 snaps. “I’m practically snapping all the time,” said Abigail.

These snaps can add up over time, but tweets can add up in minutes. Twitter has passed up Facebook in the social media world. The total number of active users is over six million.

Rylee Pilon, a junior at Bingham High, would rather use Twitter than Facebook. She uses it to see what her friends are thinking. “On average I probably tweet like twenty times a day,” said Rylee.

Many celebrities use this to keep society up to date with their lives. Perhaps this is a better resource for truth than tabloid magazines.

Using all of these different apps definitely takes a toll on the battery life of phones and iPods. Some can only last half of the day before having to be charged.

“I have 10% battery and I left my charger at home. It’s going to be a bad day,” said Nick Heninger, a wrestler at Bingham.

Hopefully this generation can find a happy medium of looking at their phone and socializing face to face.

This fear of technology taking over our lives is nothing new. As Albert Einstein once said “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”

What apps do you use constantly? Comment below, let us know.  If you want updates to the Bingham Prospector Online, subscribe with your email.