A quarter of the average person’s life is spent on their phone. Seven hours of daily screen time adds up to nearly 23 years.
As technology becomes more integrated into our daily lives, it is significantly impacting children and causing them to miss out on real-world experiences.
Children need to spend less of their time online and experience the real world.
Senior Yael Benazquen said, “Bad use of phones includes social media platforms and good use includes education websites. My brother is doing math past his grade level through a math website which is incredibly beneficial.”
Even though social media platforms are originally used as a way to connect people, this promise isn’t kept with the creation of a “digital bubble,” trapping the users in it and the non-users out of it.
GOA eighth grader Justin Friedberg shared his “outside of the bubble” perspective, saying, “I don’t have any social media platform so I feel pressured to use social media, and I also feel excluded when I hear people talking about it or use it around me.”
Antoine Bechara, a neurologist and psychology professor at the University of Southern California, said, “Internet addiction has some behavioral similarities to hard drug use. The similarities between internet and cocaine addiction really lie in those brain systems that drive you toward the reward.”
This includes dopamine, a neurotransmitter and hormone that acts as a reward signal, released during enjoyable experiences. Scrolling on social media is a common way for people to get dopamine.
This leads to children scrolling for hours on end chasing the next dopamine hit, missing out on face-to-face interaction. It gets to the point where they don’t even realize how much time has passed.
Junior Rachel Hyman said, “It is important and crucial for a child’s development to have face to face interaction. The internet should not replace that.”
Through excessive internet use, dopamine overload happens. Dopamine overload includes the symptoms of heightened energy, difficulty focusing, aggression and impulsivity.
This is impacting the academic performance and the reading levels of many elementary and middle school students.
According to the National Literacy Institute, for the 2024-2025 school year, 40 percent of students cannot read at grade level.
Due to the mental health crisis and concerns over children’s safety, Australia became the world’s first country to ban children under the age of 16 from using social media this winter. Australia is the first but probably not the last.
Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese called it “a proud day,” saying “this will make an enormous difference. It is one of the biggest social and cultural changes that our nation has faced.”
The Australian social media ban shows how people are responding to social media and what governments can do in order to protect their children and futures.
COVID-19 is often put to blame for the rising screen times.
Kaiser Permanente Division of Research found in 2023 that since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, children’s screen time rose by nearly two hours.
Apps like TikTok, Snapchat and Zoom were used to fill the gap that in-person communication held before the pandemic, leading to an entire generation spending their childhoods behind a screen. This life behind a screen is nothing out of the ordinary for them.
Sophomore Salomon Messulan said, “My brother is in fourth grade and he is addicted to his phone because that is what he perceives as the norm. It’s how he was raised.”
The beauty of a childhood is it being filled with creativity, exploration and connection. A childhood without those things is bleak and soulless.
Even though social media will remain as a major part of everyday life for the foreseeable future, kids don’t need to be dragged into it. The more time children spend online, the less they realize how much they are missing out on life.
