You’ve just come home from school after almost seven hours of grueling class work, quizzes, speeches, oral exams and tests, maybe even an after-school sport or club as well. Your backpack slumps to the ground and you note the red mark it left on your shoulder, a result of the binders, notebooks and math textbook you’ve been lugging around all day. You know that you should start your homework, but honestly, you have zero motivation. So instead, you grab a bag of chips and a glass of milk, and kick back on the couch with your laptop and the perfect incline to possibly doze off. Homework? That can wait. The world of social networking and media entertainment is at your fingertips.
According to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, those ages 8-18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day on electronic devices such as cell phones, computers and televisions. In fact, students average a total of 11 hours of media content per day, due to multitasking between activities such as online surfing and listening to music.
“Being online—it’s impossible not to be on Facebook,” said junior Annie Zisk. “My evening often consists of texting, Facebook chat and Skype, all while doing homework.”
There is an evident correlation between grades and media consumption, according to the survey. Out of those who used media for at least sixteen hours a day, forty seven percent earned C’s or lower, whereas only twenty three percent of those who used media for three hours or less had C’s. In addition, those who said they used media the most were also more likely to state that they were bored or depressed, and tended to get into trouble.
“Facebook is definitely a distraction,” said freshman Sophie Collé. “Knowing that I could easily be communicating with my friends makes it hard to buckle down and start my homework.”
According to Kaiser, seven out of ten students have a television in their bedroom, and a third of students have internet access in their rooms. Only thirty percent of students said that they have rules at home for watching TV or playing video games, and thirty six percent said they have rules on computer time. If students have rules on usage, they reportedly spend three hours less on media than if they do not.
“From what I can tell, media sources are responsible for the majority of procrastination in high school,” said Zisk.
Media has also changed people’s perceptions of how they can get information. Rather than having to work at finding answers through the library and encyclopedias, students can simply type their question into a search engine and come with the answer ten seconds later.
So here’s the situation. You want to quit Facebook and the texting obsession because you know it’s time-consuming and wasteful. But if you quit, there go your connections and insight to the happenings among friends and student life. You constantly write on acquaintances’ walls, to show that you are someone they can connect to and someone others should be friends with, and then use inbox messages to stay in touch with close friends. Everything seems fine, until you look at the clock and realize that you logged on three hours ago.
So where to draw the line? Cut off the media addiction completely and lose an important part of your social development, or keep using and abusing.
For many, it seems that drawing the line is frankly impossible.
“We say we’re not addicted but let’s face it, we can’t imagine life before cell phones and internet,” said Zisk.
However media does not have to control the lives of students. Smart choices can encourage students to lead more active lives that are not dominated by electronics.
“I actually don’t think media has to consume kids’ lives as long as parents are willing to say ‘no’ to their kids. We don’t have a TV, don’t have cable, don’t have video games,” said WJ parent Virginia Rowthorn. “The kids have cell phones and laptops so they are not totally out of it. They both have a lot of friends and don’t feel like they are oddballs.”
Too much media consumption seems to hinder social lives, rather than enhance them. Youths will retreat to their screens, rather than getting outside and exercising [or meeting up with friends]. Online and cellular devices also help feed into social anxieties. Rather than learning to socialize and interact with others, youths confine themselves to their screens. This detrimental effect can impede upon social growth, according to Kaiser.
“As a parent, I wonder what will happen to the social interaction skills of today’s youth?” said a WJ parent who wished to remain anonymous. “A great percentage of their waking hours is spent in front of an electronic screen communicating with others, instead of communicating face-to- face which involves eye contact, give-and-take conversation, and reading body language. Will they be ready for a career that involves real live interaction with others? Will their social interaction skills be so weak that they will be unable to have a successful career? Further, will their social interaction skills be so weak that they will be unable to have a real life communicative relationship with a partner?”
High school is dominated by social expectations, of which Facebook and the media are the prime influencing factors. So here’s the challenge: forget internet and text messages, get outside and live a little. Face-to-face communication versus wall-to-wall conversations; it doesn’t take a genius to realize which is healthier.
