Technology is improving, and we are starting to rely on it. We are starting to develope better cameras which is a good thing. Those cameras will be able to capture more details, have better color varieties, and combined with the smartphones, people can take them anywhere easily. Cameras are great, however, people are using them to take too many photos. Sometimes, taking too many photos can waste too much time and energy. It is clear that it is a big waste of time when people are taking selfies everywhere and taking food photos while eating. Some people may argue that this is a way to keep memories and share what people are doing and eating, but cameras only capture the surface and not the deep feeling inside.

Taking selfies are sometimes convenient when there’s no one there to take your photos so it’s okay to take selfies in those situations yet not selfies is taken because of that reason. Some take selfies to make themselves pretty and show off to the internet and some people take selfies when they are bored! Selfies takes up a lot of time and energy because for those who want to show off to the internet, they would want perfect selfies. Then they would spend time on positioning over and over again for the perfect selfie they want. NY Daily News (1) has shown that taking too many selfies is can damage real life relationships or even get people addicted to getting the perfect photos. Selfies actually do more harm than good.

Food photos nowadays are becoming a trend. You can see it everywhere on the social media. Similar to selfies, people often waste time taking the perfect delicious photos they want before anyone touches the food which really affect those who eats with them. People would upload those pictures to social medias to let people know and brag about it. Posting pictures on social media isn’t a great thing to do because people could be annoyed by what you are doing. Others might be jealous of what you are eating and start up an invisible competition by starting to post pictures of food too. This is why there have been so much food photos around the social media these days. CBC News (2) also has shown that people can be obsessed with showing off what they are eating and can lead to unhealthy diets. This action takes away the times to really enjoy the food provided for you and the times to chat with family and friends during meals.

People argue that the inventions of cameras are for sharing what they are doing and keeping memories. Technologies had made cameras easier to carry around by combining it with the phones almost everyone have today. It is reasonable to say that everyone should take cameras along with them, use them to capture valuable moments as memories, and share it to whoever they wanted to share the pictures with. That may be true but cameras only capture an instant, an instant of what it looks like in the surface. Photos do represent a piece of memory but it only shows the surface and not the memories as a whole which includes emotions.  For example: A family goes to Disneyland in Orlando and the parents took many pictures of their daughter smiling though the truth may be that the little girl hates Disneyland. Later on when the girl looks back at those photos, she might think that she actually like disneyland according to the photos since she might only remember her parents and the camera. Therefore, taking pictures are okay and encouraged but when it comes to taking too many pictures, it would waste a lot of time, energy, and it would seem like the photos had lied to you about yourself. 

Every time when our family is going on a trip, often what I remember is having my parents take photos. It is true that cameras are improving, however, people are using this privilege to take selfies and food photos which is wasting a large amount of times of what could’ve been better. People may say that taking photos is a way to keep memories and share what they are doing and eating to other people yet photos shows only what’s happening for an instant, it can’t replace a memory that represents many things. If people spend too much time on cameras rather then spending time with people they care about, then when they grow up, the only memories left would be the times of trying to take the perfect photo.