Temptation for Teens

March 28, 2021 was a devastating day for most of the students here at QPA. Students come to school with their phones for a number of reasons: to communicate with parents and friends, keep up with the latest trends or gossip, play games or to simply hide from their problems in general. On this day however, things took a turn. On this day a new procedure was introduced. Students were relieved of their phones as they entered the building. 

Now, every morning, students line up for their phones to be taken away from them, placed in storage bins, and returned at the end of the school day. Now I have to ask, how much time do you think you or your classmates can endure without using your gadgets or browsing on social media? How has using technology and trollinging the internet affected your day-to-day life? More specifically, how much of an impact does social media have on the minds of the QPA student body?  To really examine this issue, we must dive deeper in our understanding of technology, social media and its effects on today’s teens. 

Technology and social media go hand-in-hand. Without technology social media would not exist. Technology has evolved from basic stone tools to metalized objects that help us in our daily lives, one of which is the cell phone. Cell phones were first created for the purpose of having the freedom to communicate while away from each other. However, as we progressed in our lives, technology developed more and more, and by 1989, humanity was able to create a virtual space wherein we could search and get information, namely the WWW or World Wide Web.

 The World Wide Web is an information system on the internet which allows documents to be connected by hypertext links, enabling the user to search for information by moving from one document to another. It was created by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a graduate of Oxford University. Sir Tim invented the Web while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in 1989. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990. His specifications of URIs, HTTP and HTML were refined as Web technology spread. Just a few years after the World Wide Web was created, the first social media website was born. On one of the first true social media sites, SixDegrees.com, you could set up a profile page, create lists of connections, and send messages within networks. This was the start of an era, and socializing through the net became more popular than ever. Right now, social media is used by most people. The world we live in is now revolving around the use of technology and social media, with most people now focused on surfing the internet more than interacting with their surroundings. Sure, we could say that technology and social media help us to communicate with each other and help us be informed of current events and trends, but they also cause us some major problems in life.

A question I asked myself: Are technology and social media really needed? I was confused, so I made some observations, and conducted research and interviews to help me understand if technology and social media are needed or not. For example, in the past students went to school with their phones. However,  they were more focused on texting and checking social media than studying and interacting with each other. That’s when the school began taking and holding the phones for the duration of the school day.

After this system was implemented, students began focusing on their classwork and interacting with each other more because their distractions were now gone.

Christian Josh Dela Cruz, a graduating student from the Philippines claims “Technology is certainly helpful to our society.” However, he also believes that though it’s certainly helpful, it makes us more dependent. We become lazier as technology improves and takes over more of our day-to-day tasks, which also does a lot of damage to our mind and body. 

The internet and social media are really volatile places to begin with. We have seen people get happy, angry, depressed, and some also become confrontational from probing the internet. Many have even become famous, while others have become humans who resemble corpses because of how negatively social media affected their lives. People nowadays are easily influenced by the media and so, the choices or the road to success they have are formed based on society’s dictates because of social media’s influence. Being able to make a choice is a privilege we were given the moment we were able to think for ourselves. However, that privilege is being obstructed by the influence of social media.

Technology is something that we have been using to help us improve our daily lives. While it has a lot of uses there are a lot of effects it will leave in our minds. Mr. Borgella, who teaches computer science at Queens Preparatory Academy, believes it’s only natural that most people depend on technology nowadays. “It’s convenient for researching and getting information,” he admits. “But it can also be very addictive and cause distractions.”

When asked if it was possible to prevent or mitigate the use of technology Mr. Borgella was very clear. “It’s impossible to do that because technology is deeply engraved in our daily lives, he claimed. “We cannot picture a world wherein we live without technology and if we were to determine how people could last with technology? That is basically impossible because of how people depend so much on the use of technology and if you were to take it away? They’ll enter a stage of withdrawal and ignore everything and only think about how to take it back.”

It may be surprising to learn that Bill Gates, the Father of Microsoft, Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, Mark Cuban, tech billionaire and Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, don’t allow their children to use too much technology. They haven’t allowed their children to become addicted to computers and cellphones. They have known the dangers of using technology that is why they restricted their use of it. A grade 11 QPA student has admitted that he himself is addicted to playing video games and that has impacted his life badly. This is one the effects of using technology too much. The danger it puts you in is enormous. One thing that also affects the lives of people is social media.

Ms. Cindy Witcow, a psychiatrist practicing in Forest Hills, Queens, described the effects of social media on the individual. “I think that social media is a way of connection for people,” she says. “It is also used to relieve boredom.” 

​However, even though she admits that social media is used to connect with others, she also believes an effect of social media can be trauma to the mind and body. Some people are influenced by how others look and may try to copy that certain person and it is not encouraging them to love themselves. Social media also has a negative effect because of how people are being influenced in certain ways such as their feelings. According to Ms. Witcow “Social media is not really needed as a means of communication, and there are several ways to communicate with others without using social media.” 

Research on social media shows that these platforms have several positive effects on our society. Social media enables us to interact and communicate with others online, as well as relieve our boredom. But even though it has its positive effects, research shows that social media has more negative effects than positive ones. According to Mrs. Vishranti Raut and Mrs. Prafulla Patil, researchers of the effects of social media, ‘As the time passing by social media has started creating a negative impact by permeating today’s society with millions of us engrossed, unhealthy addiction, and that they create longer term friendships by being in touch online even when friends are no longer physically meeting.’ Rearchers W. Akram and R. Kumar of the Department of Computer Applications, GDC, Mendhar, Poonch, India,  also stated that ‘Students are depending more on the information reachable easily on these social networking sites and the web. This reduces their learning and research capabilities.’ 

There will be consequences if technology were to be used too much and surfing through the net will greatly affect your mindset. Therefore, it is suggested by the experts that the use of technology should be reduced and you, who is reading this, should make an effort to not be too easily influenced by social media.