How often do we experience something and immediately reach for our phones to capture the moment? Whether it’s watching a sunset, going to a concert, seeing a famous monument, or eating at a new restaurant, it feels also automatic that we take out our phones. We immediately want to capture and document the moment. Are we really experiencing the moment?

Everyone takes pictures and in the modern age, it’s a part of life. Photographs are a way to look back on special moments in our lives and share it with the ones we love. However, it’s become increasingly apparent that documenting the moment seems more important than actually living it. Instead of watching the gorgeous sunset in front of us we’re too busy trying to get the perfect angle. Instead of enjoying that concert we’ve been waiting for, we hold our phones in our face and record every moment instead of enjoying the music.

Traveling to Paris this past summer, at every monument I visited, people lacked awareness. They were too busy taking the perfect picture for their social media. If I’m being entirely truthful, I caught myself doing the same. I wasn’t really taking in what I was seeing, I was too busy trying to take the perfect picture for my Instagram or for my friends to look at. At the Eiffel Tower, everyone was posing in front of it while it sparkled to get the perfect photo. They were holding their phones right in front of their face snapping multiple photos they were probably going to delete later or never look at again. No one was really taking in the moment.

I noticed this at multiple monuments in Paris. At the Louvre, hundreds of people were standing in the courtyard outside the glass pyramid. Instead of taking in the architecture and their surroundings, many were focused on taking pictures and videos. Even while inside the Louvre, they weren’t taking in the art, just snapping a picture and going to the next piece. I found myself doing the same thing. I wanted to capture the perfect photo to remember the moment and share it with others, but in doing so, I forgot to simply stop and appreciate where I was.

We don’t need to stop taking pictures, but maybe we need to stop letting our cameras experience life for us. Sometimes, instead of worrying about getting that perfect picture for our Instagram, we should put our phones down and take in what we are seeing. It is important for us to live our lives, not just document them.