It all really started in 6th grade, when I was given my first device, a $35 LG smartphone. The sole purpose of the phone was communication with my parents, but the explorer in me realized that this humble tool was capable of more than just calling. I could now watch, play, and text, whenever and wherever I wanted.
A genuine addiction had begun. I would be in class, watching the most useless TikToks under my desk, ignoring my teacher’s instructions. I remember times going home, and with no extra thought, immediately getting on video games with my friends, with my attention span being so short that I failed to even ask my mom about her day. Day after day. I would lose hours and hours of sleep every night because of a device that fit in the palm of my hand. I felt mentally, emotionally, and physically attached to my devices, and I didn’t realize what that path would lead me to.
Gradually, my attention span started to deteriorate, with me not being able to even complete simple tasks such as reading an article. When I was in elementary school, I could read hundreds of pages a day. Now, I struggle to focus on reading just 10.
The digital vortex took me in deeper and deeper, and the COVID pandemic made the problem exponentially worse. I spent more time on screens than not, with my eyes, mind, and entire body feeling increasingly more miserable. I missed out on the quality time I could have had with our real world, because of this addiction.
What really saved me was pursuing the non-digital hobbies of basketball and cooking. Getting strenuous exercise and recipe experimenting not only kept me off the screen for hours, but showed me how good it felt to put my time and effort into healthy habits.
At the start of this year, I installed two programs on my phone that have made a significant impact on my screen time. One is called “One Sec,” which produces a relaxing screen, asking me if I really want to open the app. This reminder is huge, and is effective because it goes against my muscle memory to open the app and immediately use it without thinking. The second app, Opal, is a program that prevents me from opening certain apps, causing my phone to become the communication device that my parents originally intended for me. These apps both helped me cut my phone screen time in half, from around four hours a day to about two hours.
In an effort to further this pursuit of getting away from screens, I reached out to Palo Alto High School Psychology teacher Chris Farina to see what his knowledge could provide me in regards to screen addiction in teens.
“It’s what you’re losing out on doing compared to what you could be doing if you were … being outside, spending time with other people in person things like that,” Farina said. “It’s the convenience factor of being able to just take this out of your pocket, open it up and it’s readily available. I think that makes it very easy to get into versus the opportunity cost of ‘Let’s go play basketball’ and things like that. It requires more time, effort, coordination, and you have to get to … the physical site with your person.”
And that effort Farina speaks on, is the roadblock people need to overcome for their own good. I lost so much in my years of addiction, but now I’m going to make sure that the digital vortex is in the past.