Tiktok, Instagram, and Snapchat are some of the most known apps that teens use to waste their time. I know this for sure because I’m also one of those teens. Now I know we’ve all heard it from our parents or other people in our life, but screen time does affect your social life. It keeps you from living your life to the fullest in the real world. This is really hard to say coming from a teenager that deals with the same struggles, but am only doing this for my own good and your guys sake.
One of the most common reasons that screen time is affecting teens’ lives is by their social life downgrading. Journalism teacher/parent, Mr Krogh gave an example of what to do instead of spending 7 hours on social media , he said “Instead of spending 7 hours on your phone daily cut 2 hours from it and go on a walk with your friends, cut another 2 hours and ask your mom to go grocery shopping for ingredients to make food together, then the cut another 2 to have a movie night with your family.” You can do all of these productive plans instead of doom scrolling through your phone.
Screen time also affects teenagers’ performance in school. Often taking up their time from doing homework or studying for tests. Most Parents notice their teens’ low performance in school and decide they need to put screen time limits on their teenagers’ phones, like my parents did. These screen time limitations might work for some teens but I can say for a fact that it didn’t work for me. I was sneaky and got the password for the screen time limits that my parents put in for me . I think that if you want to improve, you have to take accountability and limit yourself , hoping to get rid of your bad habits. Junior Rishi Rajesh expressed his thoughts on screen time limitations by saying “If we don’t have something to control us we don’t know how to control ourselves, so we need screen time limitations to help us.”
Teens are also known to mostly waste their time on social media. It is known that about 60% of teens in America use more than 4 hours daily on social media only. This Unnecessary usage of social media can sometimes impact a teens mental health, causing them to be depressed. This is often caused by online cyber bullying.
At this point you should’ve probably been considering taking a step and improving your screen time. After all, you wouldn’t want these devastating effects of screen time to happen in your life. So change now! You would be so much happier and have so much more joy in your life if you do. Spend time with your family, friends or even do something productive, like studying, reading books, and even taking walks.
