“I’m right in your face baby. You gotta seize this moment baby! Put that damn camera down!” Beyoncé told a fan at a recent concert in Atlanta, according to USA Today’s website.

Beyoncé was right to scold the misguided fan. People are so focused on recording the moment now that they forget to actually enjoy it. Thirty years ago, concerts were filled with people waving their lighters in the air. Flash forward thirty years, the same venues are still filled with little lights, but now those lights are thousands of little square screens pointing at the stage.

Especially with new technology, people are less focused with what is going on in front of them and more focused on recording whatever is going on. People pay for expensive tickets to have good seats at concerts…. just to watch the show through their phone’s camera. Advancing technology is not bad, but people must remember to put it down and live their real lives, not their virtual ones.

“Until recently, it was the sharing that seemed most important. People didn’t seem to feel like themselves unless they shared a thought or feeling, even before it was clear in their mind,” Sherry Turkle, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a New York Times article. “The new sensibility played on the Cartesian [saying] with a twist: ‘I share, therefore I am.’ These days, we still want to share, but now our first focus is to have, to possess, a photograph of our experience.”

Music groups from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to Beyoncé have announced at their concerts to put the cell phones away, according to CNN’s website. Even the performers themselves are realizing concerts are no longer about the music, but about how many pictures and videos one can take to put on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

“The selfie [and other constant pictures] make us accustomed to putting ourselves and those around us ‘on pause’ in order to document our lives,” Turkle said. “It is an extension of how we have learned to put our conversations ‘on pause’ when we send or receive a text, an image, an email, a call. When you get accustomed to a life of stops and starts, you get less accustomed to reflecting on where you are and what you are thinking.”

Although we might want to stop life every couple of minutes to document what is going on, life stops for no one. The average Beyoncé ticket is $119.86, according to Pollstar’s website. Although it is understandable one would want to document such an expensive show, think of the terrible quality of the videos and pictures in the dark stadium. Most of them are not worth looking at again, and they might be deleted or lost at some point. Memory, on the other hand, is something that can last your whole life.

Next time you are at a concert, or with your friends, or at the beach, take a couple pictures (if you really insist on it) and put the phone/camera away. Enjoy the moment while it lasts because you only live once.