WOODBURY – Imagine for a minute please, a roaring cafeteria with 1st and 2nd graders running around and yelling about who’s the best superhero or who can flip a bottle the best or just a group of small children using their imagination for the better.
Well, that’s a thing of the past.
Like you, the reader of this article, whether you’re reading on a phone, computer, or a Mac book, it doesn’t matter, it may cause you to be less social if you’re not using it right.
Now let’s get back to picturing children for a minute, but now they’re older in the cafeteria staring at the newest Tic Tok trend or zombieing out on 6-7, tung tung sahur, Labubu and lots more. These horrible “brainrot” things make the youth of today less attentive to what others are saying – I know this because I was addicted. I asked one of my friends what they do with their free time.
“I grab a snack and watch TikTok and after that, I see if any mobile games that I play are updated,” said Declan Davis, freshman at NHS.
Every Sunday my phone will come up with a phone use check up and one day I decided to click on it: Ten hours in one day.
This, honestly, made me feel horrible about myself and I just needed to know how to break free from the chains of the screen. So I decided to write this to try and warn you about this topic, and I did some digging. According to k12dive, an educational website to help modern parents, 25% of children will have a phone by eight years old. This might be spine tingling but this is about high school.
According to Anna Merod, reporter for k12dive, a total of 95% of kids will have phones by 13-17 years old.
This might be because parents want their kids to be safe if something bad happens, but the kids won’t see it that way. The students will most likely see it as a view hole to things that waste time.
NHS school nurse Sandy Snabaitis understands the impact screens can have on developing brains.
“Using phones all the time decreases the socialization of their peers,” Snabaitis said. “It’s so important to have conversations with people to learn about their history and learn how to adapt to others behaviors.”
I’m not saying that you never have to look at your phone… just use it appropriately, considerably, responsibly and make sure to live in reality and not amid the pixelated world that steals our childhood away.
This is the opinion of Chief Advocate Reporter Desmond Palmer ‘29.
