One of the most important inventions of modern times is the internet. It is so important in our lives that it is now regarded as a necessity. But while the internet might be educational, informative, and very useful, we’re not using it in the right way, it’s not serving its main purpose, and we’re becoming dependent on it.

As society continues to expand and advance, different generations start to rely on new technologies that improve their living standards. The world is in the constant process of evolving. But have all of these inventions had a positive impact on our lives?

Clay Shirky, a teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies and journalism, said during an interview, “The Internet has so permeated our lives that its influence is becoming impossible to see, imagining today minus the Net is as content-free an exercise as imagining London in the 1840s with no steam power, New York in the 1930s with no elevators, or L.A. in the 1970s with no cars.”

Unfortunately, just like any other technologies, the internet has its cons and its pros. According to Comscore, a media measurement and analytics company, smartphone users spend an average of 73.8 hours a month online. That means we spend 36 days a year behind a screen.

Baby boomers constantly complain about the environment, we, Millennials and Generation Z, grew up in. Surrounded by technology that was unimaginable to them in the past. Their social engagement didn’t solely depend on the internet, they grew up in a more social stimulating period of time, where people would actually interact, unlike us, who seem to be under a spell that forces us to check our phones every five seconds. They would also go to libraries and use encyclopedias to do their schoolwork. Nowadays we can’t imagine how that was like. But believe it or not, people lived without the internet not that long ago, and their lives were neither boring nor harder. They did perfectly fine without it.

The creation of the internet has been revolutionary. For the first time in human history, people had the ability to access billions of resources by typing simple keywords on a search bar. The internet has also allowed communication to greatly improve as well. We have the luck to live in a period of time in which we can talk to people who live far away from us in a matter of seconds. The internet introduced us to a whole new concept of entertainment as well.

But we’re not fully taking advantage of it, we mainly use it to see what people are doing with their lives, to keep up with celebrity gossips, and look for useless information. We even scroll down on social media for hours until we get tired of it.

We’re not only wasting our precious time, but we’re also missing on the wonderful things the internet world has to offer, and even worse, we’re letting it control our lives.