As technology evolves, the use of electronic devices in our society has significantly increased. Research has discovered screen time having a detrimental impact on the well-being, especially amongst teens, at school, work, home and within their peer relationships.
Whilst talking with staff and students at AHS, they found a common agreement of the positive and negative effects that technology has introduced.
“I think it’s easy to disengage, like doom scrolling, it’s what you do to avoid what’s right in front of you,” Kristine Copenhaver said. “I also think there’s a lot of really great tools and access to information, a lot of ways you can make connections when you’re not physically with someone.”
Although there are various ways to look at how technology is impacting us, it is up to our decisions on how we use it, either for the good or bad. People who have taken charge and have found ways to monitor there own continue to take these efforts.
“I have screen time so I can’t really use a lot of [social media]. I don’t really use a lot of it anymore anyway, I deleted everything,” Khloe Wiersma (‘28) said.
As some teenagers take steps to take away the negative aspects of technology in their lives, some have found themselves being excluded from the content they view.
“A lot of my friends are on their phones all the time and I don’t have any social media or anything, so I’m just kind of left out, like, watching them,” Riley Kazen (‘28) said.
Getting absorbed by the constant online activity of peers, teens tend to hyperfocus on events going on behind the screens, instead of focusing on the events impacting them directly.
“You still live your life, in your 50 mile radius, but you can have experiences around the world through technology, and it’s amazing, but I think you can lose focus of what’s going on in your 50 mile radius and get too distracted by what’s happening out there,” Copenhaver said.
Although technology is something that has been increasing in popularity around the world, it is still a tool that everyone has to work with as it quickly evolves, creating an entire new way of life for most people.
“I think each generation is affected in different ways, I learned to live in a whole different world, and now I have to relearn how to live in this new world, while young people are being taught to grow up in a world by people who don’t know what their world is like,” Copenhaver said.
As people learn to live in this technologically advanced world, they continue learning to adapt to the changes, introducing even more technology into home, work, and even education.
“In school, most of our assignments are on computers, and we can’t control what our teachers are doing,” Kazen said.
While humans are responsible for the actions they take both creating and monitoring the technology, keeping an awareness of how it affects you is highly suggested by people noticing the results
“I do think that we will continue to use and rely on devices, I just hope that we lean into the opportunities and really learn to monitor ourselves as human beings, to not fall into the easy, mind-numbing, mean, hateful aspects,” Copenhaver said.
