According to Pew Research Center, 97% of teenagers use the internet every day, with the average teenager spending almost eight hours per day on their devices. Certainly to the average reader, those are very alarming statistics, yet so many Americans don’t want to consider their growing technology use an issue.
If “internet” and “devices” in those statistics were replaced by something like “smoking,” it would certainly become a cause for concern. So how come it is thrown under the radar so often? How did first-world societies become so disgustingly addicted to these devices?
Taking it back to the beginning, the internet was first released to the public in January 1983. Cutting-edge and innovative, this technology was thoroughly designed from a military project with ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) and funded by the United States Department of Defense (DOD). Through satellites and software engineers, the internet could facilitate communication between research institutions and the DOD, providing aid to intelligence efforts during the Cold War.
But it wasn’t until 1991 when the internet opened for public use that the world started to become fond of its wonderful uses. However, computers at the time were quite slow and not as generally used.
Enter 2005: Steve Jobs did the impossible. With smartphones, civilians can now access the internet with the press of their fingers at any time, anywhere.
While to the average person, this sounds incredible (they thought so, too), it ended up becoming one of the greatest causes of health concerns in the 21st century. It seems technology and social media are just about the only hobbies teenagers have today, and it is having debilitating impacts on their cognitive, social, and physical development.
Contrary to its name, social media actually makes people less social. Humans are very fond of connection. Superficially, connection has facilitated the expansion of mankind, opened up the doors to inter-regional trade, and spread endless knowledge and educational opportunities worldwide. Connection is what keeps humanity prosperous, so it is understandable that social media eventually came to fruition.
However, due to the disturbingly addictive nature of these platforms, they have lowered those historically face-to-face connections and replaced them with parasocial ones. Although one might be communicating with more people online than they would in person, these relationships do not provide the profound effects of human empathy on the body, which is a key provider of serotonin and protector against depression.
What’s more, sitting at home all day, whether working remotely or scrolling on social media, unintentionally segregates an individual from everyday society. So long are the days of playing in the backyard or biking in the neighborhood with friends. Kids are more likely to sit inside and watch YouTube than go outside and play with their neighbors. Working adults would rather scroll on TikTok during their commute than educate themselves on geopolitics or read a book.
These unfortunate circumstances society finds itself in should call for extensive measures, yet the world stays silent. People complain about the news being extremely negative, but due to lowering attention spans, it’s not so inconceivable that journalists would adapt to the current state of American cognition. People blame America’s ever-growing political divide on social media, yet the only state that seems remotely concerned about technology use in young voters and teens is Florida.
In the end, high technology usage stems down to privilege. Americans have faced so little adversity or war (due to the incredible first responders and soldiers who risk their lives every day), that they fail to understand the beauty and fleetingness of life.
It is not boring to go outside and walk; it is a gift to live in a country safe enough that death or capture is not an immediate concern one step out of the door. The news is not all negative; journalists would simply not get paid enough to report on the positives. Americans need to understand that it is not all doom and gloom: someone got married today; someone got their dream job today; thousands of flights landed safely today; someone beat cancer today.
Changing society’s habits starts with changing society’s mindset. There is a way to heal the youth, and it starts with extensive measures against technology use. Because, truthfully, it is no longer “use,” it is abuse.
