The Negative Roles That Smartphones Play in the Lives of Teens and How They Have Increased Over the Pandemic

This was written by Sarah, one of our student interns. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue.

Smartphones. What everyone now uses as the main source of communication and entertainment. The center piece for the average American’s life. No generation has adopted the smartphone more than my generation, Gen Z, or the teenagers of today. Everything in today’s world is on a person’s phone: from where to eat, to a guitar-tuning app, to videos of someone’s friends. Phones have changed the cycles, habits, and patterns of our daily lives, and not for the better. Prior to the pandemic, speaking from personal experience, my smartphone provided me with both ups and downs. Lots of apps on my phone have been fun and have provided me with a source of entertainment and humor, but with that also comes negative effects such as feelings of comparison, levels of worthiness, and self-criticism. Lots of the time, unfortunately, these apps, whether having positive or negative aspects, have caused distraction during my daily life and often have prevented me from doing even small things, especially artistic things like painting, writing poetry, and playing piano or guitar, that I’ve wanted to get done. However, I’ve found ways to discipline myself such as deleting certain apps like Instagram and TikTok from my phone and only sometimes looking at them on my computer. As much as phones and the internet provide convenience, fast communication, and entertainment, in my opinion, the negative aspects of devices that are constantly at our disposal, outweigh the positive ones. Negative effects include, but are not limited to, the addiction that smartphones cause, how they decrease social skills, and all the effects that come with social media.

Overall in the pandemic, the mental health crisis for teens has skyrocketed. With many unknowns surrounding the big questions such as: when will all of this be over? When can we be together safely without masks? In the past year and a half, the whole world shifted, and we were forced to shift with it, adjusting to online school, mask wearing, and restrictions everywhere. But most of all, the limited social opportunities that were a product of the pandemic was what I observed to be the most detrimental to teen’s mental health. Coming from a personal perspective, without in-person school, play rehearsal, and various other activities that I have pursued that include socialization, at times I’ve felt lonely and left out; holding a deep fear that I’ve missed out on things that I wanted to experience as a teen. With all of this isolation, phones have been the primary source of communication for everyone, especially teenagers. Nothing has heightened the usage of phones as much as the pandemic. With everyone stuck inside without face-to-face connection, the only means of communication in the early stages of the pandemic was through the internet, whether it be texting, DMing, snapchatting, or video chatting with apps such as FaceTime and Zoom. While teens already experience the fear of missing out and other mental health struggles, social media does nothing to help. In fact, for me, it actually increased my feelings of loneliness. It also increased my fear of missing out as well. A significant struggle for me early on in the pandemic was that I would compare my family’s level of safety in the pandemic to those who maybe weren’t taking it as seriously. Unfortunately, I really let that get me down. Another challenge involved the struggles that came with communicating solely over the phone and over social media. Sometimes I wouldn’t understand the true intentions of what someone was trying to say, or I would get anxiety around them not calling me back or responding immediately to a text. In my opinion, in person is a much easier way to decrease confusion and to communicate with others.

The average person already had some type of addiction to their phone, and the pandemic only increased that. The level of addiction that smartphones possess is immense. There is a constant need to check notifications and continually pick up one’s phone. There is a need to always have it by one’s side, to constantly check it, as if it’s a third arm. There is a rush of adrenaline that comes with each notification about a like, follow, or share on social media, even just a notification about a text. There have been countless times recently when I’ve been hanging out with friends, they’ve continuously been checking their phones and sometimes completely absorbing themselves in worlds that are far from where we are presently. Straying perpetually from the present moment due to an imaginary and subconscious obligation to look at their device and check their social media accounts is harmful. It transports people into a whole other world that’s separate from where they are physically, which is face-to-face with another real human being. Because of phone overuse, teens are choosing a virtual world over a much more meaningful connection with someone they are actually with. All of these aspects and effects of phone usage and social media generally have increased the challenges that are already present in teens’ lives such as wanting to belong, fear of missing out, and comparing oneself to others. These have been heightened more over the pandemic. Although the internet is very useful and convenient, and there are positive aspects of smartphones such as fast communication, and entertainment, my belief is that overall, phones have done more harm than good by being in our lives. I’m not saying we should abolish smartphones entirely, but I hope for societal norms to shift so that the expectation among teenagers of smartphone usage goes down.