Is a camera on my cell phone really necessary?

With the popularity of Facebook and image sharing websites, people feel the need to take and post pictures of everything they do. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t guilty of this. This need to record every single event in our lives is made obvious by the presence of a camera on most cell phones.
A few months ago, I flushed my phone down the toilet in my friend’s dorm room and had to get a new one. Because I was paying for it myself, I had to buy the cheapest cell phone, which happened to come without a camera. When I explained to people how much I hated my cell phone, I would say, “It doesn’t even have a camera!” It’s not as if it is necessary to have a camera on a cell phone, I never even use the camera when I have one on my phone, but for some reason, it feels necessary to have because you never know when the need to take a picture will arise.
My feelings that my phone was inadequate without a camera did not come out of nowhere. All cell phones advertised on television include cameras. The cell phone industry itself is showing how ‘necessary’ a camera is on a cell phone, yet I am surprised that they still even make cell phones without cameras.
I feel that the presence of cameras on cell phones speaks to a much larger issue within society, which is the fact that people can no longer just enjoy a special event or occasion. They are so obsessed with recording this event that they are not living within the moment. Cell phone creators understand this trend in behavior and are doing what they can to accommodate it.