How many hours a day do you spend looking at electronics? The daily average for an American is about 7 hours and 4 minutes every day. That’s much longer than you expected I’m sure, but when you think about it, does it surprise you? When I first saw this number, I felt that it seemed a little bit extreme, imagine how many things you can get done in 7 hours. Then I thought about my own day. Waking up to check Snapchat, scrolling through Tiktok between classes, watching Netflix while I get ready for bed, and texting my friends throughout the day, it adds up quickly.
The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health
Social media is very impactful for many people, especially teenagers who are easily influenced. While it can be a fun and easy way to keep up with trends, or chat with your friends, it unfortunately can leave a very negative mark on many people. Social media can quickly switch from fun videos to comparison of life styles. This causes anxiety from the constant pressure of trying to keep up. This is why it is important to put the phone down at times and understand what you’re truly worth.
How Phones Affect Focus, Sleep, and Productivity
It’s been noticed that scrolling through your phone negatively affects your ability to focus for extended periods of time, your sleep schedule, and your productivity. Since shorter videos like reels and Tiktoks have been popular, people’s attention spans have shortened immensely. The constant dinging of phones affects your focus as well, because you tend to think about other things when distracted constantly. Scrolling through your phone before going to sleep is also very bad for your brain chemistry because the blue light from your phone suppresses the melatonin in your body. So you’re delaying your sleep, and worsting your sleep quality by scrolling immediately before bed. Overall it’s not healthy for you to spend all day, and night staring at your phone. Even though it’s very easy to fall into, it’s important to put your physical health first.
Reconnecting with real life/ real life conversations
Excessive phone usage takes up so much of your time that people may start to struggle to have genuine in person conversations. Social media is extremely fake at times, and takes the authenticity out of people. It’s extremely important to remember, and practice having face to face interactions. Adding more real life conversations into your day will better your overall quality of life and fulfill you in many different ways. Even though at times social media may bring people closer together it’s valuable to remember the act of living your life in real life.
