In my persuasive composition, I argue that technology is and will be the downfall of our future generations by focusing on how it affects the three fundamentals of human life: sleep, relationships and psychological development. I then offer hope by sharing tips on how to become less dependent on technology. I felt most successful when my own experiences with technology coincided with my scholarly resources. That is what makes the subject in my paper seem like less of rarity to my readers and more like their reality. When you're not ignorant to teens' addiction to technology and its' effects, you do better.
“When
you know better, you do better” –Maya Angelou
“As teens
have started spending less time together, they have become less likely to kill
one another, and more likely to kill themselves” (Klass, “When Social
Media Is Really Problematic for Adolescents”). Have you ever looked at your phone and felt a negative
emotion or struggled with your feelings because of what you saw? The increase in technology has impacted the
younger generations in many positive ways but more predominantly in negative
ways. Although the increase in technology has allowed for efficiency, creativity
and innovation, it has also been the downfall of the health in our teenagers.
Three of the most important areas of humans lives have been seized by
technology: sleep, relationships and psychological development. But there are
simple solutions that provide a way forward from this detrimental health crisis
that technology has triggered.
The foundation of our health is
sleep. Our bodies need sleep to mentally and physically heal. I work on the
cancer floor at Children’s and one of the biggest struggles I have with our
teens is encouraging them to sleep over looking at Tik Tok and Instagram. In
“Screens and Sleep”, Michael Robb portrays the negative effects of technology
and the impact it has on teens’ sleep, whether they know it or not. To set the
scene, thirty-nine percent of teens sleep with phone in reach of them (Robb 7).
This is why fifty-four percent of teens are interrupted during sleeping by
notifications on their device and fifty-one percent of these notifications are
social media notifications (Robb 7). Also, thirty-two percent of teens check
their phone within five minutes of sleeping. I know I fall asleep to Netflix all
the time. There is too much technology surrounding us especially when are
body’s most powerful tool is weakened by artificial chirps. According to a
study performed by Harvard researchers that is summarized by Dr. Susan Haas in
Psychology Today, looking at your phone before bed has various negative effects
on your sleep cycle and general health. The blue light on your phone
“suppresses your melatonin secretion”, the hormones that put you to sleep (Haas,
“Screens and Sleep”). The suppression of melatonin directly affects your
circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm tells your body when to “sleep, wake and
eat” (Psychology Today). Cell phone before bedtime will also decrease your “REM
sleep” (Haas). REM sleep is “a stage of sleep that is critical” because it
“solidifies memories and is tied to your creative and problem-solving skills”
(Haas). This interrupted sleep, from experience, causes exhaustion over time
and is a contributing factor to decrease in mental health. If all of these
facts are true, the logical decision to make about screen time before sleep, or
even during sleep, should be eliminated or limited. This constraint will allow
your melatonin to produce appropriately so you can sleep properly. But sleep is
not the only major part of our lives, relationships are also.
I
believe the second most present and important aspect is relationships. Humans
are relational beings and the ability to build and sustain healthy
relationships is critical to health and success. In “Connected, but alone?”
Sherry Turkle discusses the contradictory nature of technology and human
connection. The fact that we can “end up hiding from each other, even as we’re
constantly connected to each other” is the focus of her research (Turkle). As
humans our lives and relationships are messy and filled with emotion but
technology allows us to give ourselves away in a controlled manner or as Turkle
says “The Goldilock effect... not too little, not too much, just enough.” The
Goldilock effect is how we choose what people perceive and see regarding our
personal lives. In my life I have had ten brain surgeries and will have to have
more since my condition is merely treatable, not curable. The first time I ever
posted anything about it on social media was when I was seventeen. Nine years
of not mentioning it because I felt it was too heavy and too “real” for my
social media. The problem with not being real is that this hinders possibility for “real attachments” and forming
these give us the space to mess up, learn and develop as human beings (Turkle).
Real relationships are not convenient to both parties all the time. There is
going to be pain and it’s going to get muddy sometimes. Our phones allow us to
plug in and unplug from social interaction. As humans we love the “automatic listeners”
that these platforms give us (Turkle). This constant access of “listeners” (or
so we think) robs us of our ability for “solitude” (Turkle). Solitude is where
you are able to “be separate... [And] gather yourself” (Turkle). When we are
robbed of our ability to mentally cope with solitude we begin treating our real
life relationships as a way to “feel alive” and “support our fragile sense of
self” that we lost when we gave up our solitude (Turkle). Turkle then offers
simple solutions to reclaiming times of solitude and face-to-face conversations
by creating “sacred” (technology-free) spaces in the household and being an
example to your children by showing them what it looks like (Turkle).
Relationships give us space to grow and think and I believe when this is robbed
from us, we don’t grow as much as we could. I remember having a super tough
conversation with my friend but we didn’t pick up our phones when it got awkward,
instead we sat in silence. But we got through it and grew closer. In conclusion, humans’ desire for connection
is natural, but when we are more likely to reach for a phone than a loved one’s
hand, there is a problem that can become detrimentaly down the road in both
peoples’ mental health.
Now,
what if you think there’s not a problem with technology at all? Well, in
“Teenagers Aren’t Losing Their Minds”, Richard A. Friedman tries to debunk the
“myth” of the mental health epidemic in teens. “Don’t Panic... ” Friedman
states, “... things are really not this dire” (“Teenagers Aren’t Losing Their
Minds”). He then goes on to relate how when the television was invented, there
was a similar panic among parents but what he forgets to mention is that
televisions were not built to build relationships, purchase things, or track
our daily lives (Friedman, “Teenagers Aren’t Losing Their Minds”). However, television
was built to entertain and inform, not to consume our lives and take place of
relationships. Although I agree with Friedman and how he acknowledges how our
teenagers are in an anxious, competitive world, I do not agree with dismissing
how technology is a primary cause of the world’s emotional state (“Teenagers
Aren’t Losing Their Minds”).
I
believe teenagers’ mental state is in critical condition by just looking
around. Over four times of Americans now take antidepressants than in the
ninety’s (Twenge, “Have Smartphones
Destroyed a Generation”). Every kid with a smartphone has access to a digital
world that encourages sex, drugs and harming behaviors. Dr. Ana Radovic
did a study that supports this culture of over exposure with her teenage
patients who had severe depression. She was introduced to the connection that
it provides for her teens but there was a point of over-sharing that the teens
were exposed to. For example, one of her teens followed her favorite band and
they soon began posting their fresh self-harm cuts, as a way to relate to their
fans, of course (“When Social Media Is Really Problematic for Adolescents”).
But this inappropriate overshare of information can expose teens to or
reinforce coping mechanisms that are unhealthy (Klass). The Netflix series, “13
Reasons Why” is another prime example of how overexposure of vulgar images
affect impressionable teens. Studies Show from JAMA
Psychiatry that 13 Reasons Why causes “association, not causation, but raises
the question of “media contagion” — that is, the possibility that the show and
the intense discussion of it on social media may have led to some imitative
behaviors, and cites “the need for safer and more thoughtful portrayal of
suicide in the media.”(Klass). I was also over exposed to certain subjects such
as depression, self-harm and suicide when I was in my early teens. I believe it
solidified some of the things my mind had been subconsciously already seeking
out in order to cope with my medical conditions. I felt as if it made it okay
or normalized to self-harm or have mental illness. The fact that I thought what
I saw in the media was healthy and okay was proof that developmentally I was
not able to fully rationalize what I was feeling and seeing. There is an epidemic and to deny that is to be
ignorant. But, I have closely thought on how to better prevent premature minds
from addiction and overuse of technology and why we should take action.
There is a space and time for technology and there’s a
space and time to be without it. Just as Turkle explained how some spaces are
sacred. Spaces in our life I believe are most sacred are our sleep, our
relationships and our emotional developmental health. There are simple steps
that could be taken that I believe would make a huge difference. First, as our
future is sitting in our schools, there should be a no-phone rule during lunch
time to encourage relationship building. Another aspect that will further
encourage healthier minds is to restrict social media to eighteen years old and
older. This can be better enforced by having each person on social media sign a
legally binding document saying they are eighteen. Doing this will allow the
platforms to remove the underage users without any hiccups. Restrictions like
this would decrease profit for these platforms, but I believe that profit is a
bit less important than mental health. To better encourage less social media
use is to utilize celebrities and figures who are popular among adults with
children to testify against underage social media use. I did not just pull the
first two changes I would make out of thin air. Ever since I was little, my mom
has done a great job at exposing me to things that are appropriate with my
developmental journey. She didn’t get me a phone until middle school and it was
out necessity. But as I look back, I wasn’t ready for a phone until seventeen
or eighteen because I was overexposed to things that harmed my mental health
and relationships. I acknowledge the effort made already by platforms such as
YouTube that now has a kid’s program and other apps that restrict screen time
and content. I think it is an healthy step. The last solution I would encourage
for each individual is to either sleep with their phone on silent and over an
arm’s reach from the bed. I also believe we should fall asleep with either a
book, meditation or something else technology-free. These solutions are not the
end all be all, but a start to help lessen the negative effects of social media
on humans whose brains are still developing.
Because of technology advancement, there are
many ways we are more protected and safe than ever. But our minds,
relationships and sleep are not safe from the very thing protecting us:
technology. As our minds are focused on the little screen in front of us, our
perception and priorities change. They begin to revolve around the little box
of pixels than the people around us. We begin to desire that aesthetic feeling
and look twenty-four-seven but the only place we can get it is from the phone.
In order to comeback from this mental health epidemic, we must abandon our
obsessiveness for perfection and allow areas of our life to be without
technology. Because, after all, perfection these days is cheap and at the tips
of our fingers. But raw, beautiful relationships are priceless and vital for
our health.
Works Cited
Baili, Susan. “6 Ways That Night-Time Phone Use
Destroys Your Sleep.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 17 Apr. 2018, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/prescriptions-life/201804/6-ways-night-time-phone-use-destroys-your-sleep.
Accessed 3 Feb 2020.
Klass, Perri. “When Social Media Is Really
Problematic for Adolescents.” The New
York Times, The New York Times, 3
June 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/well/family/teenagers-social-media.html. Accessed 3 Feb 2020.
Turkle, Sherry. “Connected, but Alone?” TED, TED, Feb.
2012, www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_connected_but_alone?language=en. Accessed 3 Feb 2020.
Robb, Michael. The New Normal: Parents, Teens,
Screens, and Sleep in the United States. Common Sense Media. 2019, pp. 2-32.
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/the-new-normal-parents-teens-and-devices
-around-the-world. Accessed 3 Feb. 2020.
N.A. “Circadian Rhythm.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/circadian-rhythm. Accessed 3 Feb. 2020.
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