Hannah, GET OFF YOUR PHONE!!
The day that I got my first smartphone was the day that I started to get “distraction talks” from my mother. She would tell me to quit spending so much time on my phone, to get off Instagram, and that I had so many other better things I could be doing with my time. And honestly, she was right. She’s still right to this day, because after eight years of having an iPhone I still don’t know how to put it down. I’m sure everyone else who’s lived under their parent’s roof has heard the same spiel, whether it was about a phone, video games, or magazines. Parents and children have been having the same discussion for so many years. But are parents more right than they were before? Are we truly a more distracted generation than any other?
TikTok...aka My Downfall
It’s no secret that phones are distracting machines and that a big part of this is because of social media. Without social media, smartphones are pretty bland and boring. Social media creates a huge majority of the distractions that we experience on our phones everyday, and some platforms of social media are a lot more addicting than others. For me, if it wasn’t for TikTok I wouldn’t be spending nearly as much time on my phone as I do. The constant flow of creative content is easy to find myself being sucked in to, even when I don’t want to. Multiple times a day I find myself unconsciously opening the app and scrolling through. The addictiveness of the app contributes greatly to its popularity.
There is a running joke on TikTok that everyone downloaded the app as a joke, got sucked in, and are now addicted to it. That’s definitely what happened to me, and because of this it’s contributed greatly to my overall addiction to social media. Before downloading TikTok I could go days and sometimes weeks without getting on social media. It was very common for me to purposely delete Instagram because I was bored with it and needed time away from my phone. Since downloading TikTok, I have only been able to do this maybe once or at most twice. I just can’t get away from my phone. I feel a need to check my phone and be on it more than I ever have before. I have also been able to feel and see the consequences of my addiction which makes me understand that my mom’s warnings are not really so crazy after all.
Am I (Wo)man or Am I A Muppet?
As we talked about in class on Friday, my phone has made me become more of a muppet. It’s like my phone has control over me from the inside out and all of my actions are results of what my phone is telling me to do. Of course this isn’t as literal as it sounds, but my phone controls my choices and how I spend my time most of my days. Every now and then there will be a day where I’m busy or I’m just enjoying spending time in someone’s presence and my phone won’t even be on my mind. The one thing I am thankful for is that I’m not so addicted to my phone that I can still focus on real important things when they are present in my life. It’s on days where I have nothing to do and am laying in bed bored that I feel my need to satisfy my addiction most. Of course there are still days where I find myself hanging out with friends and I’m still glued to my phone. But unlike some people, I am usually able to quickly realize what I’m doing and pull away from my phone until I’m back at home or in a situation where it’s more appropriate. Honestly, when I recognize what I am doing it hurts me a lot because it makes me mad when other people do it to me so I know exactly what my friends are feeling when I do it to them. It makes me feel like a really crappy person.
I Want to be a Great Parent
When it comes to distraction and our phones, I would say that pretty much all young millenials and Gen Z would ultimately agree with their parents that the distraction their phone causes them is hurting them more than helping them. We are a generation that has had an unlimited amount of comedic, creative, and explicit content thrown in our faces nonstop for years and years, and it’s not going to stop. As long as I am alive, I am going to have a constant stream of information from the internet always being thrown in my face. I will neve be able to escape it. While this is something that scares me, I have to be able to learn from my mistakes and those of my peers and prepare to be able to help my kids face the same issues that I have had because of the distractions from my phone. We are an experimental generation and I want to be able to harness the information that is found from us and be better equipped to help people in the future because technology is distracting and it’s only going to get worse.
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