One day in my US Lit class, shortly after the new phone policy had been implemented, one of my friends got his phone taken away. He was so stressed out that his immediate reaction was to go home because he needed to keep his Snapchat streaks. Use of social media by teens, especially in school, is a topic that is often discussed. It has pros and cons. For example, it can be used to spread positivity and help people, but it is also very easily addictive and can be dangerous to a student’s physical and mental health.
The effects on mental health can be catastrophic. Since social media started becoming more common, so have mental health problems like anxiety and depression. According to a study by National Institute of Health, increased social media use goes hand in hand with internalized problems such as anxiety and depression, and while social media use in general isn’t always bad, the length of use is important because sitting there doom scrolling for hours at a time can be really harmful to one’s attention span too, which directly affects how students learn.
Another thing is that increased use of social media can greatly affect the sleep students get, which thus affects the other aspects of their life, like school, work, and sports. Social media can be directly tied in with the amount of students being tired in school, a study by the CDC shows that students who used social media for two plus hours per day were tired 12 percent of the time, while students who used it less than two only reported being tired in school 6.5 percent of the time, sleep is one of the most important things for a high school student, and this makes it even worse, City high students describe the effects of this directly on their learning.
“Usually after a long day, I stay up late on my phone, but I feel the effects the next day,” Trevon Herman, ‘26 said.
Even with the new phone policy, social media can still affect how students perform in school, especially because of the sleep problems it can create. This leads to even more stress because students will be anxious to answer messages or talk to certain people during the day and won’t be able to as much.
“Usually at the start of class, I want to check Instagram or messages to see if I got anything, but sometimes this leads to my phone getting taken away,” Ramiro Batres, ‘26, said.
Social media also creates feelings of jealousy and feelings like you aren’t enough. This is because there will always be people showing off their fancy lifestyle or body and it can make people, especially teens, feel bad about themselves which is a huge con, also, not everything on social media is real anyway. People can fabricate lavish lifestyles or routines that they don’t actually live, which can make the stigma of feeling bad about yourself worse.
