You’re home after a long day of classes and sports practice. There’s a whole pound of homework waiting for you: an English essay, a math test, a biology Edpuzzle, but you’re so exhausted all you do is collapse into your chair and whip out TikTok. 

It starts off fine, you laugh at a POV and watch a “Get Ready With Me.” But then; 15 minutes have passed, then 30, then an hour is gone, but you keep telling yourself that you’ll watch one more video and that will be it. Suddenly it is 10:00 and pitch-black outside and the homework is still waiting for you.

Too bad you still have to do it. By the time you’re done, your mind is numb with information and sleep loss. It’s past 1 a.m., so you barely have time to rest before the day starts again. You curse at yourself for wasting so much time, but you know tomorrow you’ll once again be so tired that scrolling is the only thing you have energy for.

Being online has a huge impact on the state of mind of the average teenager, more often negative than positive. A study of 1,642 children in Japan found that consistent phone usage had a link to behavioral problems in childhood, such as difficulty with attention and proper conduct.

Based on a recent Talon survey, most Oak Park High School students gained access to the Internet between the ages of seven and nine. While this may not seem worrisome, internet access at such an early stage of life can cause issues later on. Children should not be receiving this access until they are developmentally ready because of the dangers with mental health, risk of addiction and time consumption.

Based on OPHS data, students who had the highest screen times, with an upwards of 10+ hours a day, tended either to spend most of their time on gaming or social media apps such as Youtube, Tiktok, Instagram or SnapChat, usually with a combination of several of these apps.

According to the Brown Undergraduate Journal of Public Health, social media is designed like a slot machine. You take the chance of winning or losing when you pull down the lever of a slot machine, similarly to the chance you take when you swipe down to the next video.

“It starts with a trigger, an action, a reward and then an investment and it’s through successive cycles, through these hooks, that habits are formed,” behavioral psychologist Nir Eyal said. “We see them in all sorts of products, certainly in social media and gambling. This is a big part of how habits are changed.”

There’s always the possibility that the next video will be “the one,” as the journal states; that it will be funny or relatable and bring you some brief joy. So you keep on swiping. Just as slot machines are an addictive form of gambling, social media can become dangerously addictive. Even the way the apps look and work pull you in. 

University of California – Davis Health explains that social media causes the brain’s reward center to release dopamine, a chemical that can cause pleasure. Receiving likes and other feedback on your posts is a form of validation that can consume us.

In a study by Betul Keles, a PhD student at King’s College London, it was found that social media had a direct link to poor mental and physical health. Overall, using the Internet does not require much movement, and this lack of movement is detrimental to mental health. Having trouble with mental health can decrease motivation to be active, creating a cycle.

Social comparison can also cause poor mental health. On apps like Instagram, you get a glimpse into the lives of your peers and family members. You may start to wonder, why isn’t my life like this? 

Davis Health states that social media increases a fear of missing out, or FOMO. You’ll want to constantly check and follow along with the stories and posts of people you know so that you don’t feel left out. 

Further, social media can cause problems with specifically body image and comparison of physical appearance. If you spend maybe a few minutes online, you’ll find yourself watching dozens of “What I Eat in a Day” videos. It sounds harmless enough, but more often than not these types of videos are accompanied with a flash of six-pack abs or an impossible hourglass figure.

More often than not these “WIEIAD” videos and people’s posts in general are not accurate reflections of what the people posting them will eat every day of their lives. People post what they want the world to see of them. Comparing yourself to this impossible ideal, that probably doesn’t exist, is detrimental.

“Adolescence is a vulnerable period for the development of body image issues, eating disorders and mental illness,” Gary Goldfield, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, said. “Social media can expose users to … images and photos … of celebrities and fashion or fitness models, which we know leads to an internalization of beauty ideals that are unattainable for almost everyone.”

A study of Chinese college students also showed that phone addiction causes an increase in procrastination. Students have trouble regulating their time online due to addiction; after all, it’s much easier to watch videos than to do that science homework. Pushing back schoolwork and other tasks can then lead to late sleep, stress and more, ultimately causing even more of a decline in mental health.

The simplest way to prevent all of this is staying off the Internet in the first place. If parents don’t expose their children to it until later on, then their children will not grow up dependent on it, decreasing risk of addiction later on.

This is hard to do, especially as schools grow increasingly online, so the next best solution is to stay off of social media. If not entirely, then limit your usage. You can do this by setting time limits in your settings, downloading an app that restricts screen time or by dedicating a specific time to use it.

I get it— breaking social media addiction seems hard. I can’t count how many times I’ve whiled away hours of my day with my eyes fixed to a tiny, moving screen. But, a study by Coyne and Woodruff found that a social media detox isn’t actually as hard as you might think. It results in better sleep, improved headspace, mindful eating, improved satisfaction in life, better connections with others and reduced mental health issues. Your time is valuable, and you should be spending it by truly living and doing what you enjoy.