High school musicals and concerts are underrated.

Here in our community, music and theater lovers can find shows, performers and concerts that are right up there with anything you’d find in Houston.

Sure there’s a few off-key notes and missteps, but that’s to be expected from teens who are still learning the process.

I went to two free performances this spring – choir and band – and got more than I expected. The teens knew their cues, how to perform on stage and demonstrated proper theater etiquette.

Thanks to social media, I’m not quite sure audiences understand what they should do and shouldn’t do.

Almost everybody is recording the show on their cell phone. They seem to be totally oblivious to the fact that their cell phone lights up and is distracting in a dark auditorium.

They’re so busy recording, making sure the phone’s in focus and they’re getting the sound right, they’re missing the magic of the music.

Music has the ability to transport us to another place – sometimes it’s a calming place, if we’re listening to an orchestra, and other times it’s a place of excitement if we’re watching “Hairspray.”

Cell phones have created a barrier between us and the performers, and not just in the theater. We have a cell phone out all the time to capture every moment, and, as a result, we are losing the human touch.

At Little League baseball games, parents no longer visit in the stands. They’re too busy filming the game on their cell phones, uploading the pictures and videos to social media or checking their email for the latest buzz on an always updating news feed.

Few want to be bothered with talking to a stranger.

People walking or running around the park usually have ear buds on, listening to podcasts or music instead of the leaves rustling in the wind.

Maybe there’s no contest between bees buzzing and Lady Gaga, but we are sacrificing the interaction with the world around us for social media gossip that’ll be forgotten in hours.

Which brings me back to the band concert. After the first song started, I caught something out of the corner of my eye.

A woman on the third row, right in the middle of the theater, was leaning forward in her seat, her cell phone held above her head, filming the performance.

She didn’t just film one song, she filmed the entire concert. Four people behind her tried seeing around her arm up in the air, but they couldn’t, so they moved.

This woman never noticed there were other people around her.

That’s when I realized having cell phones out to record life was more the norm than sitting quietly and absorbing the music as an engaged group.

I struggle with finding the balance between capturing the milestone events on video and putting the phone or camera away to see everything with my eyes instead of through a lens.

I understand parents want to capture a special event so they can to watch their child over and over again. Those videos and films become more precious as the years go by. There are VHS tapes I have of family Christmases from years ago I guard with my life.

The video, however, was secondary to being there with my family, interacting, talking, gossiping and eavesdropping on all the other conversations around the room.

It’s easy to capture every moment of our lives on video and share it on social media. We have to be careful that in sharing every morsel of our lives we no longer have a private, personal life.

But I still want memories on film, so I have some advice.

Film the show, but do so as quietly as you can. Greet those sitting around you and ask if your filming will be disruptive.

Position the phone between your chin and your chest so as to not block others behind you. Dim your screen if you can.

And, look up from time to time.

It’s a beautiful world out there.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.