Children used to seek the comfort of their parents’ touch before going to sleep, or in the first waking moments of the day. Today, instead, they reach for their cold, metallic, inanimate phones in those same moments.

Do we actually prefer seeing “likes” or texts to feeling the company of family?

Increasingly, technology invades our personal lives, stealing our attention from reality, placing us the midst of a tempting and seemingly marvelous virtual world. Through it, we manipulate others’ opinions of us. Our flaws, we edit and delete. Our qualities we alter, revise, and reconstruct.

As technology infects society, we purposely expose ourselves to the epidemic. The disease stimulates a metamorphosis: we transpose ourselves into our profiles, apparently perfect, shallowly happy, and cunningly deceitful. Those facades thrive, extending from our virtual world to reality. In this lies the root of the superficiality in our society: we show not who we are, but who we wish we were, a mechanization of ourselves that mimics social norms.

The more we conform, the more “likes” we get. The facades slowly begin to mirror themselves, until we cannot them apart. A country founded by immigrants and entrepreneurs of vastly different backgrounds, we wave our flag of diversity with utmost pride, yet we allow technology to homogenize us. Consequently, hypocrisy lingers not merely in our personal images, but in a national one as well.

Online, we reveal little, if any, vulnerability and rush to hide our insecurities. The idea of this immaculate, impeccable identity is glamorous, but it is not real. It is not genuine. It is not human.

What is the point of this illusory perfection? It has no point. Flaws are necessary. They lead us to discover acceptance, forgiveness, and even hope. Would the world really benefit from the disappearance of those virtues?

Superficiality pervades our society. Relationships have decayed, becoming merely virtual interactions. We do not really know people, but we know perfectly the version of themselves they present to us. We cannot become bystanders in the deterioration of ourselves, our friends, our family…. Technology will eradicate our appreciation for life, for others, and for reality. Authenticity will be as rare as the most precious of stones, and honesty and trust will eventually seem mythical.

We have become addicted, dependent on technology to the extent that it has clouded our personal identities. We must not allow technology to modify us to that extremity. Technology should be a tool for connection and not alienation. We should seek the company of a person instead of our hard, lifeless phones. We must not let technology continue to alter our morals and values. We must not neglect ourselves and fall into the temptation of virtual perfection when our flaws are what make the world worth living in.