We all spend entirely too much time on our phones. Our phones distract us from important events, prevent us from being fully present in the moment, and sucks away our motivation to do things. Ever since the first iphone was made in 2007, phone addiction has increased at an accelerated rate. Smart phones in particular have become the norm in our society ever since they’ve been released. To be more specific, iPhones; When I was about to enter high school, my family was considering getting me an android as my first phone and I told them no immediately, and argued, “If you’re not going to get me an iPhone, then I don’t want a phone at all.” Selfish right? I know, but I wasn’t thinking about that, the only thing on my mind at the time was fitting in and not getting judged about what phone I had and I’m positive most of you thought like this when you were younger as well. We are addicted to our screens, it blocks us from being present during important events and once we start scrolling, it’s nearly impossible to stop.
Screens do more harm than help in our classroom environments. The chromebooks that the district supplies every classroom with are actually not helping us as much as we think, “remember the large experiment conducted at West Point to see how classroom computing affected learning? The students who were allowed to use a laptop to take notes in class did significantly worse on the final exam than the students who did not use laptops” (Kersting page 148.) Multiple experiments that have been conducted have proven that devices in learning environments only limit us students from exhibiting our full potential in showing what we know (which is checked by tests, quizzes, etc.) and truly understanding what’s being taught in our classrooms (like homework, classwork, etc.) In our classroom environment when devices are present, we all know at least one person who goes off task and looks at or does something they have no business looking at or doing since it’s not beneficial to what’s being taught at that point of time. For instance, my English teacher, Mr. Johnson has caught multiple students watching youtube, ranging from sports to videogames while chromebooks were present. Even when devices aren’t present, we all know someone who will argue to keep their phone (if the teacher requires phones to be put up) and even someone who will try to sneak on the devices they do have. Honestly, I fall victim to this, when I can’t have my phone with me, I’ll still use my apple watch to check if anyone has texted me, and if someone has texted, then text back very quickly so it’s not too obvious and so I can get back on task. Furthermore, you would think that the higher achieving students wouldn’t be affected by the distraction of devices right? Wrong. Another study has shown “Among the students with the highest ACT scores, those who were allowed to use laptops or tablets performed significantly worse than their peers in the no-technology section. What’s odd about these results is that one would expect the smartest students who were in the laptop-friendly section to use these machines more prudently” (Kersting Page 84.) Even the students who were considered to be the smartest couldn’t resist the distracting nature of technology and use it to successfully benefit them. To sum up, I believe that we need to slowly start removing devices from our learning environments because we would definitely be better off without them, causing grades to improve and causing us students to have a better understanding of what we’re being taught.
Screens also harm us physically, mentally, and socially. Social Media has changed how we view ourselves, “Especially social media starts to dig deeper and deeper down to the brainstem and take over our kids’ sense of self worth and identity” (Damania 10:26-10:36.) Kids on social media view their self worth based on how many likes/followers they have. Personally, people I know, as well as myself, have suffered from thinking like this. Going into high school, I believed that I would get made fun of if I didn’t have enough likes or followers. This stemmed from the fact that I thought how much attention you get on social media proved how popular/valuable you were in real life. Mental Health has also been majorly impacted by social media, “In depression and anxiety for American teenagers which began right around between 20ll and 2013, the number of teenage girls out of a hundred thousand in this Country were admitted to a hospital every year because they cut themselves or otherwise harmed themselves. That number was pretty stable until arand. 20l0, 20l1 and then it begins going way up. It’s up 62% for older teenage girls. It’s up 189% for the pre-teen girls. That’s nearly triple. Even more hornilying, we see the same pattern with Suikide. The older teenage girls 15-19 years old, they’re up 70% compared to the first decade of the century. The preteen girls, who have very low rates to begin with, they are up 151% and that pattern points to Social media. Gen z, the kids born after 1996 or so, those kids are the first generation in history that got on social media in middle School” (Damania 16:09-17:18.) Social media plays a huge role in the increase in self harm and suicide rates due to the fact that younger kids value themselves based on the attention they get online. Moreover, not everyone is nice on social media since anyone can say anything and some think there will be no consequences for being negative, disrespectful, or rude online. Not everyone on Social media is able to ignore rude/disrespectful Comments on social media. I’ve watched many videos/cases about how a child has committed suicide due to what was said online about them, from random people online or people they go to school with. Parents need to postpone when their kids get on social media for as long as they can while also limiting their kids social media as much as possible so they are not exposed to such cruel things at such a young age.
Being on our Screens all the time limits us from being able to just sit and think. It’s okay to be bored, but not too bored, “Being too prone to boredom leaves you vulnerable to all sorts of hasties including problem gambling, drug and alcohol abuse, binge eating, dropping out of school and depression and anxiety. People over-prone to boredom are less aware of their own emotional states and tend to focus on their discontent externally, blaming the environment for not stimulating them, rather than themselves for being insufficiently curious”(Robertson paragraph 8 & 11.) Not being able to be okay with being bored results in people doing negative actions to fill that hole. Not being able to be okay with being bored also impacts our mental state and not being able to take accountability for our actions and why we aren’t as curious. Due to being too prone to boredom, someone that I know started smoking and trying to do lots of things they had no business doing, their actions not only impacted their health and mental health, but everyone else around them. There are also positive results for being okay with being bored, “the cure for boredom is curiosity, in a state of boredom, it is entirely possible to become curious about the boredom itself. Boredom is a Signal that you are searching for new goals ” (Robertson paragraph 10 & 14.) In our State of boredom, we’re able to come up with some of our best ideas, “It turns out that when you get bored, you ignite a network in your brain called the “default mode” so, your body, it goes on autopilot while we’re folding the laundry, while we’re walking to work, but actually, that is when our brain gets really busy!” (Zomoridi 3:18-3:32.) When we are doing daily tasks, our brains are able to wonder and cause us to think about things we wouldn’t usually think about. Being bored expands the area of what we usually think about and helps our imagination. We need to take advantage of being bored because although we feel like we always have to be doing something, and we feel like it will be the end of the world if we’re not, it positively impacts us and helps us more than we could ever imagine in the long run.
We need to be able to set reasonable and realistic screen time limits/ goals and stop trying to multitask when we’re trying to be productive. Students may think that they’re amazing at multi-tasking but really, “they take so much longer to complete their work because their multitasking while doing homework. That’s right – Kids are posting, texting, listening to music, watching youtube and doing homework simultaneously, and for some strange reason we ignore this. There’s a lot of Science that proves multitasking is no good; not only does it affect kids’ school work, but it also affects their brains and bodies” (Kesting Pg. 77.) There are so many studies that have been conducted to show the negative impacts of multitasking and that multitasking is harming us more than we realize. If there are studies that have proved this, Why do we still multi-task? From my experience with multitasking, in the moment, I think it’s better for me to listen to music so that I “focus” more, or I watch T.V. just because, doing either has never really helped me finish work faster because I get distracted very easily. I’m positive that I’m not the only person who thinks listening to music does more help than harm, but if we were to set aside any amount of time to do homework, and compare how much work we’d get done without music compared to with music, l know there would be a huge difference. There is no such thing as multitasking, “Every time you shift your attention from one thing to another, the brain has to engage a neuro chemical switch that uses up nutrients in the brain to accomplish that. So, if you’re attempting to multitask, you know you’re doing four or five things at once, because the brain doesn’t work that way. Instead, you’re rapidly shifting from one thing to the next, depleting natural resources as you go (Zomorodi 4:28-4:52.) Multitasking is heavily harming us, we only have a limited supply of glucose yet we’re using it like there’s no tomorrow. We shift our attention every 45 seconds which is an extremely insane reality to grasp. If we have limited supply/not enough of glucose, it’ll lead to an immediate cognitive decline. We need to take control and stop overusing how much glucose we use every-day before it’s too late.
Social media that we find ourselves scrolling on all day were programmed and designed to function just like this. Social media sees what they can show us to keep us on our devices, it knows what we feel before we feel it, and it knows what we like and dislike. A lot of people think “oh Google’s just a search box and facebook is just a place to see what my friends are doing and see their photos, but what they don’t realize is they’re competing for your attention, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, etc. Companies like this, their business model is to “keep people engaged on the screen” (Damania l:32-1:54.) One more important thing we need to realize is, if we’re not paying for the product, then we are the product, which is definitely true since most of our data is being tracked. Our phones know basically everything about us and maybe even know us better than we know ourselves, and companies are fighting for our attention so they can increase their money.
Works Cited
Kersting, Thomas. Disconnected. Baker Books, 4 Aug. 2020.
Damania, Zubin. A Real Doctor Watches the Social Dilemma.
youtu.be/aisZHLj1vYk?si=c9EpjnpCzQIVPh-i . Accessed 25 Jan. 2025.
Robertson, Ian H. “Embrace Boredom to Become More Creative.” Psychology Today, 20 Jan. 2014, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-winner-effect/201401/embrace-boredom-become-more-creative. Accessed 8 Mar. 2020.
Zomorodi, Manoush. “How Boredom Can Lead to Your Most Brilliant Ideas.” TED Talk, TED2017, 27 Apr. 2017, www.ted.com/talks/manoush_zomorodi_how_boredom_can_lead_to_your_most_ brilliant _ideas. Accessed 8 Mar. 2020.
