“We are people. Not data points, Not Twitter feeds, Not Buzzfeed quizzes.”

I've been walking this earth for twenty short years. In those twenty years I've seen more than many millennials would dream of. I've been to twenty countries, seen the triumph of the human spirit, the evil hidden in each of our hearts and the love suppressing it. I've seen first hand the kindness of strangers and how it changes lives. Twenty countries, countless languages, dialects and a carousel of the most unique and varied human characters you can imagine. Each was different, but all of them had one thing in common.

They all had a name. An identity. A backstory. Each just as deep and twisted as my own. Each had thousands of memories, past lives and lives touched. Mistakes and failures, successes and achievements.

Each asked my name. The name to a face. Something many people take for granted in our globalized and ever expanding web of connection. Now, there were some that were disinterested in the person behind my name, but those numbered far less than the rest.

“The uniqueness of human interaction has become so foreign to some of us that we don’t know how to react in traditional mediums of communication, in writing, in speech and through emotion.”

The western world has seen the rise of social media giants like Snapchat, Twitter and with valuations just as large to boot. Millennials use this technology to extrapolate their lives to the digital ether. Things that happen online, in the digital world, become real events. The collision of two realities. Digital conflicts like, “Why didn't you accept my friend request?” and my favorite “Why didn't you snap me back?” become real life conflicts. I personally cannot devote the time, energy or personality to keep up with the constant onslaught of “Social” that our digital lives demand. Controversy from digital moments spill to real life whispers, lives touched every single day, identities changed.

The line between public and private has been blurred.

Anything we put on a social media service, become a part of our identity. We no longer own, or have power over words, pictures and videos that are public, those who view or hear these words or images judge us on the meaning and personality behind these posts and not our true intentions. Perhaps one could argue, this is precisely what we intend for, sharing bits of our lives and personalities for others to consume. The digital copies of ourselves, pieces of us, cannot be separated from our flesh anymore.