Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been doing an Instagram informational kind of survey.

I wanted to see how quickly people respond when I post a video.

I would do it all hours of the day, because most of you are notification junkies.

On Labor Day weekend, my friend Jay and I were posting non-stop for a couple hours to see the amount of people who would like my stuff immediately.

I’d literally watch people like my stuff in real-time. I’d think to myself, man, these must be really wonderful people that are so bored in their life, and they must be so happy that a smart phone came along to make them no longer bored.

But I decided to run this experiment, and I realized something. Here you are, you sitting with your cute, adorable kids and you’re digging sand castles and you’re taking a picture and posting on social media.

Who the hell cares?

You’re having a great day with your kids. Why do you need to report it to all the people who aren’t there?

What’s the point? Who are you trying to hook into your life? What are you trying to do?

I have no problem if you want to post cute and adorable pictures of your kids digging sand castles or riding a boogie board on a lake at night when you get home, because you want to show the wonderful life that you’re having to your friends who don’t live there.

I get that.

But when you’re actually doing it in real-time, what’s the point of whipping your phone out to go and give this information, give these pictures to somebody else?

Well, I believe it’s because most of us are so bored in our lives.
We’re so bored.

Either that or we all just want to be reporters and work for Fox News.

Live from the beach today, here is Joe and Mary.

They’ve taken their three kids, Brent, Alex, and Tom.

Here’s the picture of Tom digging the sand castle for the very, very first time. Hurry honey, post it. It’s Instagram hour right now!

We want to get the picture up before Mary from Louisiana, our good friend, posts her cute little kids alligator hunting on the bayou.

Why are we doing this? It’s because we are addicts.

It’s no different than being addicted to sugar, to pretzels and salt, to alcohol, marijuana, or methamphetamines.

It’s another form of addiction, and that’s the brilliance of it.

People are addicted because their own lives are not exciting enough.

And this is the unhealthiest form of addiction because we’re becoming less and less present as a society. You can’t look around without seeing people staring at their phone 24/7.

It’s as common right now as a bird pooping on a car in the summer afternoon.

We’ve become a society of dummies. Liking, thumbs up, reporting non-stop, yet not actually connecting.

The need for validation and the need for being a reporter has become so strong that it’s taken away the moments that we actually share with one another.

So here’s some advice from me…

You can either listen to me or not.

Turn off your notifications. Turn off Facebook. Turn off Instagram. Turn it off. You don’t need the notifications.

You don’t need to know when somebody posted something.

Put your phone on vibrate.

There’s no reason in the world I should hear your ring when I’m out and about. I don’t want to hear it. It bothers me, and it bothers other people.

Don’t talk in public places.

And the next time you’re out with your cute, adorable kids, keep your cute, adorable kids to yourself.

Post the pictures at night so your other friends can see your cute, adorable kids.

Be present, folks.

Stop taking pictures of everything. Stop wondering, should I take a picture of every time I eat something and just post on Instagram, so I can get 25 likes???

We’re acting like a bunch of juvenile 10-year-olds, and what are we telling our kids?

We’re showing them that we, as adults, are acting just like them.

It’s your choice to put the phone down. It’s your choice to become present. Make a choice, because your relationships are strongly suffering.

And it all comes down to your own insecurity, plain and simple. That’s really what it is. We’re all really basically very insecure.

We need validation.

We get validation from others, and yet we lose the connection and intimacy.

It really is a way to avoid things, because deep down we’re insecure and we don’t want to be heard, so we’d rather have validation from strangers and friends who we never really talk.

We’d rather have that instead of really putting ourselves out there and having a relationship with another human being.

I don’t know about you, but I am craving a real relationship, real validation with somebody who I could be extremely open and comfortable with and not feel judged.

And I get that from my friends. My real friends, not the 1700+ people who claim to be my friends on Facebook.