Live More

How do we approach conversations with students about cell phones without falling back on the adage, “cell phone bad”? First, we need to look at how media has evolved over the years and recognize that this is not the first time we have been suspicious of new technology.

 

The image of an older generation wagging a finger at innovation is not new. In the 1930s and 1940s, as radios became common in over 80 percent of U.S. households, adults worried that children would “rot their minds” listening to serialized dramas, swing, and jazz instead of reading books.

 

A decade later, televisions appeared in living rooms and critics warned that staring at a glowing screen would ruin eyesight and turn everyone into couch potatoes.

 

By the 1980s and 1990s, personal computers had entered family spaces and the light of a monitor in the corner came with new concerns. In 1995, psychiatrist Dr. Ivan Goldberg coined the term “Internet Addiction Disorder.” Around the same time, a clinical psychology student named Kimberly Young began researching excessive internet use after seeing a friend’s marriage fall apart when her husband spent 40 to 60 hours per week in online chat rooms. By 1998, a new clinical disorder had emerged.

 

Fast forward to June 29, 2007. Apple released the first iPhone to the public. In 2009, push notifications became widely available for apps, allowing them to demand attention constantly and creating the beginning of the endless cycle of checking our devices.

 

Then came infinite scrolling, social validation features, personalized content algorithms, gamification, and front-facing cameras paired with image-based social media. Tech companies focused intensely on exploiting human psychological tendencies.

 

And exploit they did.

 

Today, the average teenager spends around seven hours and 22 minutes on their phone per day. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 in 4 teenagers who spend four or more hours per day on screens report symptoms of anxiety (27.1 percent) or depression (25.9 percent) in the past two weeks.

 

Now let us go back to the conversation with students. I am guilty of ranting about cell phone usage and how it is terrible for you, often referencing the above CDC statistics. I am rethinking my approach, and I want to start with this: phones are not good or bad. They are designed with intentions. Those intentions are to use up all your free time.

 

Are those intentions aligned with your own?

 

Above this article is a graph created by Dino Ambrosi, a digital wellness speaker for teenagers. He outlines how an 18-year-old will spend their remaining time in months, assuming they have a 90-year life expectancy. They will spend 228 months sleeping, 126 months working or in school, 18 months driving, 36 months cooking and eating, 36 months on chores and errands, and 27 months on bathroom and hygiene.

 

That leaves 334 months of free time. Currently, our young people are on track to spend 312 of those months staring at a phone. Dino’s approach to this conversation is not about the negative health impacts of overuse, but about the opportunities lost.

 

You see, every hour spent scrolling is an hour not spent building a skill. An hour not spent building relationships. An hour not spent exploring a passion. We need to encourage our students to think about what matters most to them and then ask whether their screen habits are helping them get there or pulling them away.

 
I say this: we can throw science around all we want, but at the end of the day, it is your life and your time. That means the most important thing is asking yourself whether what you are doing online actually matters to you.

 

Your free time is about doing things that make you feel alive, connected, and proud of who you are becoming. We are so fortunate at Shawnigan to be surrounded by so many opportunities to grow ourselves, whether that is through our minds, our emotional well-being, our experiences, our bodies, or our creativity.

 

By being conscious of this, you will separate yourself from the millions of other young people who will, without a second thought, continue down the path of giving away their free time. And for what?

 

Another eight hours gone, with nothing to show for it. The point is not to use screens less…

 

It is to live more.