Almost every day, I ride a bus to and from school. Since the beginning of the year, friends of mine have been on their screens practically every minute of the ride. Not only is it a bad way for them to spend their time due to its countless negative aspects, but it is also a prime example of communication — or rather lack of — between kids today.
Additionally, the few kids who don’t use screens — such as myself — are stuck in a silent, seemingly empty bus save for the occasional beep of an electronic device. Screentime overuse is one of the most pressing issues today. In a world that relies on electronics more frequently, it is important for users to realize its negative impacts.
The three main negative impacts are lack of socialization, overstimulation and depression. While there are countless more, these three alone are main factors of poor performance in school, anger issues, moody behaviors and loss of friends. Due to these reasons and my real-life experience with this issue, I was inspired to write this piece.
Let’s begin with the lack of socialization. Too much time spent on screens can cause social and emotional problems.
“Children are spending more and more time on screens, for everything from entertainment to homework to messaging friends,” wrote Michael Noetel, a researcher with the University of Queensland.
An international study revealed a correlation between social/emotional issues and extended screentime. This included both internal problems, such as anxiety, and external problems, such as aggression. Compared to younger children (ages 0-5), older children (ages 6-10) were more likely to develop socioemotional problems with greater screen use. Screens can’t encourage you or teach empathy — devices lack genuine emotional depth.
Fifty-five percent of teenagers reported that texting and online chatting was their most common way of staying in touch with friends. Social media is also a popular way for teens to connect. Overall, communicating mostly on screens is bad for you, and yet, it’s the most common way to communicate for teens.
Another negative aspect of too much screentime is overstimulation. Overstimulation is when the brain takes in more sensory and mental input than it can handle. Your mental and physical energy reserves will drain and headaches can be caused. In the long term, you have overall reduced resilience and increased stress. You are less likely to be able to multitask and will struggle to think clearly.
Two senses are affected by overstimulation from screens. For noise, you have the constant notification bings, voices in multiple videos at once on social media and noises that are part of a video game or online gaming platforms. For sight, there are a ton of things, like the constant change of colors on social media and the bright flashes on videos and many online posts. All these factors at once are too much for your brain to process.
The final negative effect of too much screentime is depression. Teens who use screens less than four hours a day (which is still a massive amount) have a 9.5% depression rate, a significant drop from the 9.5% depression rate of teens that are depressed from using screens for more than four hours a day.
On top of that, users that spend a portion of their day on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram can have a depression rate of up to 66%.
As Child Mind Institute puts it, “A 2017 study of over half a million eighth through 12th graders found that the number exhibiting high levels of depressive symptoms increased by 33% between 2010 and 2015. In the same period, the suicide rate for girls in that age group increased by 65%.”
Smartphones were introduced in 2007, and by 2015 fully 92% of teens and young adults owned a smartphone. The rise in depressive symptoms correlates with smartphone adoption during that period, even when matched year by year, observes the study’s lead author, San Diego State University psychologist Jean Twenge, PhD. All in all, depression is bad and often increases with the amount of daily screen time used.
To summarize, too much screentime is a pressing and continually more serious threat to today’s teens. To prevent more issues arising from this one core problem, it is important to realize the drawbacks of screentime and to remind yourself of the potential consequences of overuse. By utilizing the methods we have today to stop this overuse of electronic devices, we will not only help myself and friends on the bus, but millions of other kids all around the globe who are experiencing similar dilemmas.