Dear America: Phones are Ruining the World

Phones are ruining society, and not just in new generations

Leo Colena, Staff Writer
February 2, 2023

From having a to pay to use a phone, every time you wanted to make a phone call, to keeping one in your pocket that can be used at will, phones have been changing  year by year for decades. What started off as an amazing invention of technology has turned into a huge distraction to the world.

Since the Corona Virus took the world by storm in 2020, schools and most work places had to adapt to much more use of technology. I personally am an easily distracted person, and when I came back to school and everything was either on my computer or my phone, I couldn’t focus and my grades plummeted. This year when the teachers decided to be strict with it again, and put our phones up in the phone garages, my grades have gone way up.

I’m sure, just like myself, we have parents or grandparents who love talking about the good old days and how much better times used to be, and lets be honest they sound a whole lot better then how times are now. I know that at least I wish I grew up in a time without phones.

The phone has become very dangerous. It has become such an addiction that people can go for a 15 minute drive without looking down at it. So many accidents have been caused from texting and driving. All it takes is one look down and you could be in an accident. I am very concerned for upcoming generations, who are being born into technology with no knowledge of life without it.

Almost every time I go out to eat I hear a little kid crying because his parent took the phone away from them and they don’t know what to do with out it.  Giving a phone to a little kid is almost like giving a drug to a baby. We are giving kids something where as they get older they will just get more and more hooked and wont know how to function without having it at the ready 24/7.

Cyberbullying escalated a great deal with the invention of the phone. Anybody can say whatever they want hiding behind a phone screen. There would not be near as many bullying instances if kids were forced to say it face to face. Everybody is big and tough behind a screen. Having good social skills is a great thing to have. The new generation is going to grow up with no social skills because all of their interactions can take place over social media.

Although the target audience is mostly the newer generations, it effects the older generations as well. They have to adapt to a completely new lifestyle then they have been used to for decades. Phones cause tons of stress for older generations because they have been so accustomed to a different lifestyle for so long.

If you look up how many hours a day different ages should have for screen time, it is shocking. Babies 0-2 years old should not have any screen time. Children ages 2-4 should have 0-3 hours, which I personally believe is way to much,  kids and teens 6-17 years old should have no more then two hours, and adults 18 and up should have 2-4. I have seen some of my friends screen time be in the double digits. If there are 12 hours in a day that means that you are spending at least 90% of your day staring at a screen.

Even my own screen time is way to much. I usually have a weekly screen time average of around 4-6 hours. That should get cut down to half. When you look more in depth into your screen time, you can see the apps, and the time of day that take up most of your screen time. The majority of my time takes place during the week during school hours. The phone is a huge distraction and you don’t even realize it until your grades start to slip or you take a look at your weekly screen time report.

Phone usage is rapidly becoming one of the biggest problems in the world. Companies keep adding more and more crazy additions, its going to become an even bigger problem. Instead of trying to add new additions, I think we should work on trying to move backwards again towards simpler times.