There was a Black Mirror episode a few years ago that focused entirely on the concept of memory.

The episode took place in a future where each human was implanted with a recording chip. The chip would record every single thing you did during the day and gave people the possibility to go back and watch exactly what had happened at a given time. In fact, the epi­sode opened with a man replaying an interview he had had earlier in the day so that his wife could see exactly how it had went.

Throughout the episode, the protagonists would go backwards and forwards through their memories, pausing and judging the looks that people had given them days before, focusing on trivialities that most of us mercifully forget on a daily basis. It was an episode full of angst and anxiety that was not so far from the reality we are starting to experience.

Technology is doing us ab­solutely no favours

Human beings’ survival and happiness depend on their ability to forget, to consign memories to nostalgia, to adjust to slights and hurts. In the past, we would right­­fully say that time heals all wounds but how does time stand a chance if we keep poking our fingers in them?

Technology is doing us ab­solutely no favours in this regard. Facebook periodically gives us an option to see our memories and photos of when we may have been decidedly happier; green chat dots remind us that the person we want to speak to more than anyone else in the world does not want to speak to us; seen messages from weeks before remind us that we are not important enough to be ans­wered; photos of our friends at events we haven’t been invited to and social media likes become a currency and a yardstick for vali­dation.

The sad part is that I form part of the last generation that remembers life before 3G: those born today and tomorrow will not know what it is like to be able to be young and foolish and not have it recorded and shared for all the world to see.

In addition to all this, this constant recording of our every move has turned us into censors of ourselves and harsh cri­tics of our physical appearances. Many people won’t take a photo unless they feel they look perfect; others fake entire situations to make their lives looks far more interesting than they truly are.

Social media has plugged itself into our insecurities and succeeded in amplifying them, making people feel like they need to have somebody else’s life and looks to feel good about themselves.

There are fewer and fewer silly, human moments and more and more 13-year-olds looking like Bratz dolls while staring lifelessly into a camera.

We were all once so worried that people were watching us and now we are worried that they aren’t: we might need to start to focus more on actually living than pretending to for the sake of people who don’t even know who we are.