Every Sunday afternoon I receive a notification on my phone that tells me what my daily screen time was for the past week.  Some Sundays, I have seen the notification and it has shown 6 hours.  Then I ask myself “what was I doing for all these hours?”  This notification puts things into perspective for me.

Social media has been an enormous, unhealthy distraction to society.  Surveys conclude that 90% of teenagers have social media.  Social media includes facebook, instagram, snapchat, tiktok, and more.  The idea of instant gratification that all these apps provide is an addictive, distracting habit that most teenagers rely on.  This idea overshadows the idea of long term satisfaction.  It creates our minds to only desire instant gratification, which we can easily obtain by just opening up our phone and scrolling through social media.  Social media is designed with bright colors, short videos, music, and a desire to want more.  It is designed to keep us scrolling and keep us controlled. Individuals make a living off of creating algorithms to keep us on our phones, which makes it even harder to break the habit of scrolling. The more we are on our phones, the more they have data of what we like, and the more they put in  front of us.