High school is a place for mental and physical disasters! With teenagers who have raging hormones, piling workload, and fragile self-images, the adolescent mind is a jumble of problems that is susceptible to any threat that may confront it—and the biggest threat of all may well be smart phones.
Everyone loves the smart phone, from elders to toddlers. It remains the most valued possession amongst all age groups, but teenagers happen to use it the most. When we look at what teenagers are often faced with—things don’t seem so puzzling after all. High school is one of those places where you can shatter your insecurities or expand them. It’s one of those places where you really start to confront your identity because you’re surrounded by so many things that define who you are, but there’s a downside. The path through high school that involves finding our identity is a wager in how we approach things long-term or even for the rest of our lives. Developing patterns in high school can lead to these habits becoming deeply entrenched within us that can have impacts for generations. Many students in high school struggle with communicating their problems, and when faced with an option to do something about it, the first option is reaching for the phone….. but why?
Therapy?
Too expensive.
Family?
Eh, Not understanding enough.
Phones?
Easy! Convenient and… relatable!
When you think about it, the whole subject matter seems like a huge paradox. Teenagers use their phones to cater to mental health problems; as a result, not only does this become a coping mechanism in adulthood, this deteriorates every single aspect of our mental health. When we adapt to having our phones as a response to our problems, we develop a sense of dependency; whenever we see anything on that 6-inch screen, emotions arise. Dependency, like being susceptible to a critical post, can largely affect how an individual may feel for a week. Sometimes even receiving a simple text message could stain one’s self-concept. But, all in all, we face effects larger than what we see, as little things become bigger in our minds.
Our phones should not be the first thing we reach for if we’re feeling depressed, cynical, or even jubilant. There are times where we want to find relation to the things that we feel and our phones seem like the most fast and convenient solution to do so, because we want to get quick responses to our problems, but in doing this, we sacrifice the realness that comes out of life—human connection. This is something most teenagers lack. Often, we are taught to suppress how we feel to look nonchalant or cool, but I encourage us all, and whoever is reading this, to engage in small talk or conversations about how we’re feeling.
Small talk is beyond the name given to it— a simple “how are you” means so much more than three words. It means acknowledgement and a subtle attempt at empathy in trying to let someone know that their emotions are seen, and there is nothing more human than that. Life is all about embracing these human connections. Screens do not provide a response that fix our emotions; they only hide them. When we step into conversations, we learn more, and we start existing with these emotions in a way that will not hinder our mental health backward, but help us learn and grow in experience.