“Social Media, Cyberbullying, Sleep, and Other Phone Problems” is the seventh of fifteen teen articles received in spring 2024 from Piute High School students. Three of them were published in The Byway‘s most recent May paper. The rest will be featured online.
Social media is one place where people can do much damage to others; they can talk about others and people wouldn’t know. If people know each other in real life and they don’t like each other, one of them can fat shame and talk about the other and their insecurities and among other things stuff to other people. It’s just a big battleground and a problem. There are a lot of social media apps people use like Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, and video games. People post good stuff on these apps, but others like to be rude and post not so harmful text. A few solutions for this are setting limits and getting parents involved.
Getting parents involved with screen time is actually a good thing. They can watch what their kids are doing online and set a screen time to limit their time online. It can really affect their child and most importantly it keeps them healthy. If parents knew about this then it would help a lot. The problem would be solved a little, but there will still be a lot of damage the teens can do.
If teens get in trouble constantly, then they need to get their phones taken away. If he or she gets their phone taken then they often act like it is the end of the world. They will get over it though. If they get their phone taken away that could help them focus more. Taking a child’s phone away can actually help them with many problems including anxiety and depression. It will increase the amount of sleep that they get. They can also go outside and get the right amount of sunlight that they need. It is important to get off phones and get off social media for a while.
A lot of teens struggle with social anxiety. It’s really bad in this generation and in the YouTube video “Simon Sinek on Millennials in the Workplace” Simon Sinek talks about how social media in the generation is affecting teens’ social anxiety. He explains how people should help boost their sociality by getting off the phones. Teens binge watch television and other social media on their phones addictively.
As teens have problems with social media, it is important for them to know about how much sleep they need and how important it is for their body. If teens do not get enough sleep their bodies will struggle. Being on a phone can interfere with the melatonin that the body needs to sleep. It can also cause teens to stay up very late, and they can even still feel asleep even if they are awake. It is crucial to get a good amount of rest. Sleep can provide people with benefits such as healing injuries, fixing poor physical and mental health, and problems with behavior and attention.
When we talk about people getting no sleep in the article “Social Media and Teens” by the AACAP website, we learn that cyberbullying can affect him or her in the same way. Teens get on all these apps and social media sites and think it’s going to be ok. They go into different apps and sites blind. It is like giving a child a gun and saying go have fun with it. Some teens go through it on social media every day getting bullied and just making people have bad thoughts.
Restriction should be a big consideration when teens get their phones. Some parents use screen time on apps or they take their kids’ phones away. There are a lot of apps parents use to monitor their kids so they make poor decisions such as taking bad pictures, and controlling apps. Parents should use these apps for their kids to be safe and respectful.
– by Andres Nevarez (10th) Circleville
Feature image courtesy of Abbie Call, The Byway.
Read more from Piute teens in Social Media Addiction by Braige Beus.
Read more about how parents can be involved in their children’s screen time in Guardians of the Web: Empowering Youth to Stay Safe Online by Tamara Houston.