By

Adam Peachey, Staff Writer

If a person’s screentime is four hours a day, that winds up being equivalent to eleven years of their life on the phone, assuming they live for 80 years. While the importance of phones in our modern society definitely isn’t to be written off, it gets to a point where one must question the status quo.

If the average screentime for a college student is 8 to 10 hours (according to a Baylor study from 2014), that means that by the age of 80, assuming the trend continues, they will spend 26 years of their life on their phone, presuming they started at age 10.

Obviously, this has consequences. Besides the more apparent downside of missing out on the world around us, it would be of interest to examine the psychological effects of screentime within the college-aged demographic.

Recent studies have shown increases in depressive and anxietal symptoms with relation to screentime among teenagers, but this wouldn’t be the only screen-time-related consequence.

As college students, we must ask ourselves what specifically is enrapturing us to the extent of four-hour screen time days. A quick survey around the Spectator office will reveal a majority of that screentime is used on short-form media apps, such as TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube.

While this may not necessarily seem to be that much of a problem, the intake and habitual decrease in attention spans due to short form media consumption have been shown to dramatically affect cognitive function and self-control.

Additionally, over the past 10 years (which theoretically could be linked to the onset of said short-form media), the self-reported cognitive disability rate among adults under 40 has doubled to 9.7%.

So, with all of this information readily available to the demographic that is already on their screens, the question of action must come to mind: why aren’t we doing anything?

While it would probably be disingenuous to say that no action is being taken, despite the growing counterculture, the end of the epidemic isn’t particularly in sight. Screen time has risen 30 minutes globally since 2014. If you’re reading this, the chances are that you’ve already become disinterested and switched tabs or put the newspaper down.

So what, even, could we do? In order to bring down the average, the individual must put down the phone. While not all screen time is inherently bad, a good place to start would be cutting said short form media that correlates with cognitive decline and spending less time on apps that encourage us to compare our lives with the superficial posts of others.

We are losing our ability to think, and overreliance on the screens isn’t helping. Our generation would rather consult ChatGPT or another artificially “intelligent” assistant than do their own research. I personally haven’t heard the term “brainstorm” used in years. And while short form media isn’t the only problem, if one is always plugged into their phone, they will miss the world around them.

Although our current trends have us losing 20 years of our lives, that doesn’t mean that we have to. There is always the capacity for change. So please, my generation, I appeal to you: next time you find yourself awake at three in the morning with a dead phone after a doomscroll, don’t pick up the charger, but put down the phone.