While social media platforms like Twitter, Snapchat, and YouTube are able to connect us to people around the world we have not stopped to ask what negative effects it has on children being raised in a digital world. According to research done by University of Pittsburg Health and Human Sciences, the average social media user visited what they consider the most popular social media sites sixty-one minutes a day. That is more than an hour of our day devoted to social media. The average teenager, however, has been reported by CNN to spend up to nine hours a day on some form of social media. We have to look at the social problems and health problems related to the continued use of social media.

Your phone emits a blue light so that you can see the screen throughout the day but at night when the sun is down the blue light is still being emitted. The way your body processes this light is the same way your body processes sunlight. Your body is tuned to get sleepy when that kind of light is absent so when you continue to look at the blue light after hours then your body thinks that it is still daytime and continues to want to stay awake. This can obviously change sleeping habits very easily especially in young children and teens. In 2014, there were over 10% of America’s population diagnosed with insomnia compare that to 1997 when only 4% of our population was diagnosed. This is only a correlation and correlation does not equal causation but the recent uptick in insomnia patients may have something to do with all the advancements we have made in technology. Insomnia can be detrimental to teens school and social life because it not only affects your sleep cycle but can also affect your wake cycle. Many people who suffer from insomnia can fall asleep in class just because their body is too exhausted to continue.

Social norms are what dictate rules in our society. It isn’t a law to wash your hands after using public restrooms but if you don’t society has trained people to think you’re gross now. At Cass High School it is not a law that when you’re driving out of the student parking lot you go around all the speed bumps but everyone does it. Technology is changing our social norms. Next time you go out to lunch start to look around at all the families, very few of them talk; they hand their kid a phone, tablet, or Gameboy type device and tell them to be quiet meanwhile both parents are also on their phones ignoring their children whether they mean to or not. When you go to the bathroom, it’s very common to grab your phone and sit there with it. It’s completely socially acceptable to upload a selfie to Instagram once a day. What is this doing to our children? We are getting them addicted to technology on purpose so they will leave us alone. This also creates other bad habits that carry on to teenage years. At parties, everyone is on their phone, at lunch with your friends, sleepovers, even on dates. Every time there is silence we take out our phones sometimes people don’t even pay attention to what they are looking at they just mindlessly scroll through social media because they cannot create a conversation.

Is this world of connectivity making us less connected? With mental illness at an all-time high in this country, cold parents, and teens that barely look up can we ever really fix this problem that we have already made? I don’t have the answer. No one does. If we stop using all forms of social media our lives because rampant with tedious useless tasks but too much technology and our mental and social state suffer. Until more in-depth and longitudinal studies are done, we will not know how to cure today’s “phone addiction”.

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