Volume 2.8 | Letter to the Editor

In the last edition of El Ciento-Siete, there was one article that caught my attention. The “Screen Junkies” investigative report was eye-catching and left me reflecting on the habits we teenagers have with phones. The authors of this article should be proud that they were able to hold this investigation and turn up an excellent piece presenting a lot of valuable information.

I am one of the many guilty students who use their phone excessively and knows how potentially damaging it can be. I know I can read a 200-page book or hike “La Cueva de la Virgen” around 7 times in the same time I am staring at my Instagram explore page, but what am I doing about it? The only action I have taken was setting a reminder on Instagram to leave the app if I have been on it for more than 2 hours a day.

Although I would love to change the amount of screen time I consume, if I am not looking at my phone, I am staring at my laptop screen doing homework. This was only mentioned briefly in the report and I feel it deserves more notice. Our society is not made for us to avoid screens, we sometimes use them to our advantage and it is crucial to note that our phones are not the only screen we stare at. If the average phone screen time is 3 hours, it probably gets twice as big if we looked at the laptop screen time. We cannot avoid screens... everywhere we go, school, our house, the dentist, we see a TV or a computer.

We may just have to accept the fact that screens have become something of our daily lives and try to reduce phone screen time as much as possible... and I say this while typing on my laptop and staring at its screen.