'No, you don’t need to document everything. (But I can’t stop).'

There’s 22,000 photos on my phone and I can’t bear to delete a single one.

There’s also thousands more in my Google Photos account, which is essentially another version of ‘The Cloud’ which I have never fully understood because what do you meannnn I need to pay for more storage? Just… make more room.

My phone is also constantly telling me I have no storage left and that I need to offload my apps (another part of technology I don’t really get. Again, just give me more room).

So you would think I would be a bit more sparing with the life moments I’m capturing on my device, but last week I caught myself taking the most mundane photo that has arguably ever been taken in the history of iPhones.

Watch: MM Confessions: The weirdest thing my kid has ever done. Post continues below.

When I made lunch for myself and my three-year-old daughter, I took a picture of our food before handing her plate to her. It was colourful, sure. Fairly healthy, yep. And better than the cheese and vegemite sandwiches I usually make for us both.

But Julie Goodwin won't be quaking in her boots thinking there’s a hot new chef in town.

It was literally just some cooked chicken with salad and cheese. And not even a fancy fetta or goat's cheese. Just the good ol’ home brand grated cheese that tastes slightly like rubber (but in a good way?).

Here it is: It’s average at best, we can all agree.

Not exactly a culinary masterpiece. Soure: Supplied. 

As I took the photo though, it was like there was a glitch in the Matrix as I caught myself and actually said out loud ‘what are you even doing?’.

I was never going to post it anywhere. It certainly wasn’t a major life moment that needed to be remembered or passed down to my daughter like "oh looook honey, remember that time mummy managed not to burn the chicken? And look how well I chopped that cucumber!"

The more I thought about it, the more I realised it’s because our entire generation (millennials) has been conditioned to document… everything.

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone these days who hasn’t taken a blurry video of fireworks from a distance. 

Or an aerial view of their spicy margarita while out for drinks with the girls.

Or a lovely (but fairly average) sunset view from their balcony.

It’s something most of us do with the reasoning that we’re collecting happy memories to look back on.

It’s an impulse so ingrained in us that even if we’re just a regular person with a few hundred followers on social media (me), we can’t help but pick up our phone the moment we do something slightly out of the ordinary and collect content at a feverish pace.

Taylor Swift’s recent Australian takeover (AKA the Eras Tour) is the perfect example.

On the Telstra network alone, attendees used around 34.85 TB of data each night at the Melbourne shows capturing footage. You can tell by now I don't really get technology, but that sounds like a s**tload, right?

Well, it’s equivalent to 15,500 hours of video which would last nearly two years if it was played continuously. See? A s***load.

It was the same at the Sydney shows, where I was one of those Swifties taking footage of what was the most epic concert I’ve ever been to.

I'm not suggesting people shouldn't do this. It was an epic life moment and one I'll remember for the rest of my life.

But will I actually watch the videos I took again? Maaaayyybe once or twice. But probably not.

Because if I'm really honest with myself, I took those videos with the knowledge that I’d choose the best few to put on Instagram stories. That was their purpose. It was not about capturing my own special memories. It was about other people.

It is about validation. About being included. About saying "look at this thing I'm doing/place I'm visiting/fancy cocktail I'm drinking."

I mean, I think we can all agree that if we went on a holiday to Europe or Bali and didn’t take photos, it would be like it didn’t happen. It’s almost unthinkable.

So what does that say about us as a culture?

Of course we've always taken photos and videos, but it really seems to have ramped it up a notch to where we now watch people document every single little aspect of their life on TikTok.

From shopping hauls where creators show every single item they bought, to 'get ready with me' videos where they share exactly what skincare products they use and in which specific order, nothing is too detailed or too mundane when it comes to sharing content online these days. 

Then there's the parenting influencers - making big business out of documenting their children's lives online. 

Just this week, I watched a content creator sharing her realistic night routine with her newborn, where she set up a tripod camera at multiple different angles around her room and had what seemed to be a ring light already on to capture every time her baby woke and cried out for a feed or a change throughout the night.

@krystianatiana Newborn nights #newborn #baby #babies #moms #parents ♬ original sound - Krystiana

In a weird way, the content actually seemed quite subversive and groundbreaking. It was a much more realistic view of life with a newborn baby than anyone normally shares. And a lot of parents commented saying it comforted them knowing they weren’t the only ones whose newborns woke so many times.

But it also seemed incredibly performative and like an extra task this already exhausted mother felt like she had to complete.

And it’s this compulsion to capture content at a feverish pace that now means our feeds are flooded with videos of proposals, gender reveals and babies meeting their big siblings for the first time. These are moments we should, of course, remember and savour for the rest of our lives, but when you have to essentially pause the real-life moment to hit record so you can capture it as a digital moment, does it take something away from the moment itself?

But it's not quite as simple as just telling ourselves to put down the phone and be more present.

For me, most of the images on my phone are of my daughter. It's almost a fear that I'll miss a funny thing she says or a core memory she creates and not be able to have them for her to look back on - or for me to look back on as my memory fades.

Because some moments, like the last night my daughter slept in her baby cot, feel necessary to capture and relive time and time again.

But others, like my sad little lunch, can just be enjoyed in the moment.

Do you document everything? Tell us why or why not in the comments section below.

Feature image: Stacey Hicks/Canva.