Social Media(Right leaning): Recent Episodes
Hector Ochoa
Hector Ochoa is a student at Garfield High School California. He believes that social media takes a big role in society, could be influential to be good and bad. Cover art photo provided by Markus Spiske on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/@markusspiske
Technology has become a fundamental part of both work and education, Yet regardless of the perceived benefits, many students don't use the technology effectively. One of the challenges educators face is how to motivate students to use their technology for academic purposes. In order for students to fully dedicate themselves to learn and appreciate their learning environment, they need to create a weekly schedule that's efficient and designed properly. While students learn how to organize themselves, high quality programs are now being offered to help student's become more engaged in academics rather than other useless activities. With these new opportunities from the collaboration of professors, scientist and teachers, students can learn to effectively use their phones, computers and technology. Student's can make their addiction a useful component to getting them somewhere they want to be in life. Students can also try to create a work schedule that is more different from anything else, creating new hobbies or plans can create new neural pathways, if shown dedication. The older pathways will close off. Trying new ways to stop procrastinating is the key to stop, social media is just a tool that needs to be controlled and used effectively in order to use time wisely. Lastly, people who feel stuck when they procrastinate their priorities, they can try to organize themselves little by little, until they feel ready to take their responsibilities. Talking from experience, I wasn't able to move forward because of my depression and my thoughts, I became more physically active and it helped me relieve stress and focus more on my priorities. Yes everyone has different problems and different ways to solve their own, though a solution always exist, if you keep looking for it, you'll eventually find it.
Young teens and young adults who use social media are more likely to have depression than to a person who doesn't use it, "Facebook and other platforms were shown to have a substantially (from 13 to 66 percent) higher rate of reported depression than those who spent the least time." - Caroline Miller. With the rise of smartphone use, the rise with depression. A 2017 study showed that over half a million eighth through 12th graders had an increase spike of high levels of depressive symptoms in the span of 2010 and 2015, in the same period, young girls had increased by 65 percent. Smartphones were initially introduced in 2007, and later on in 2015, roughly about 92 percent of teens and young adults owned smartphones. With this information it correlates with the use of social media causing depression. In that time span, there was also a sharp spike of reports of students looking for help in school counseling centers, specifically for depression and anxiety.
Social media can effect the youth by taking control of people's lives, especially for young teenagers. From my personal experience I've seen that teens are more socially active, and It's also one of the main reasons why it can be a distracting tool to their academics or our everyday environment. It has distracted me for the past 6 years, it has controlled my work, school, anything in general that is productive. It's a cycle that will be everlasting until you eventually figure out that it's bad, bad to abuse the online social medias to the point where you can't focus in the real world. It blocks a lot of opportunities that can't be available later on in life, for example experiences on physically getting out with friends, taking advantage of your age before it runs out and you become an adult, where the real priorities and life goals become a reality. In my own experience, I've lost so many opportunities while using my phone to socialize too much, I've lost many friends, I've lost personal items because I was too distracted, I didn't pass classes that were only available to my age and year, I lost many things.
First of all, let's start from the beginning, the origin of social media. The first earliest methods of communication between great distances, were letters in 550 B.C.E. In 1792, the telegraph was invented to allow messages to be delivered over a long distance faster than ever, though they weren't fully efficient yet, the in 1865 another way was created to send messages. An underground pressurized air tubes to carry capsules from one area to another. In the last decade of the 1800's the telephone was invented and the radio in 1891...
Everyone has procrastinated in their life, you’re not alone in trying to find a solution in the endless cycle of suffering. We have all experienced the guilt of not completing something that was meant to be on time, we tend to pile our work and eventually give up on it if our consequences aren’t too heavy. Social media can be a big factor to making your everyday priorities complicated, there is a lust for attention in every person, it is evolution that has brought that trait to every human...