In today’s world technology is everything. If you need groceries, to talk to a friend, to check your email, or to pay your bills, it is all on your phone. Technology has a major impact on my daily life, my screen time is about 9-11 hours daily, which is only for my phone. My most used apps are TikTok, Snapchat, Spotify, Netflix, and Instagram. None of my most used apps are for academics but purely for leisure and social interaction. I am always listening to music, whether I’m studying, walking to class, or simply taking time to myself, there is always music playing. I love to use Notion on my phone and laptop to organize my class schedule and assignments. The app lets me customize the appearance and check off my academic tasks. I use Google apps every single day, the main two I use are Gmail and Google Docs. I am mainly in math classes, so I frequently use YouTube to help with certain theorems or concepts that I do not fully understand.
My phone is a terrible distraction for me while trying to study and do assignments. What I try to do is set a timer using my clock app so I can tell myself to not look at my phone for an hour while I study. Sometimes I will even put my phone in another room so that I don’t see my phone light up with notifications, because who isn’t going to grab their phone when it lights up sitting beside them? I would love to say that my ratio between personal leisure and academics with technology is good but realistically, I spend much more time procrastinating with technology. TikTok can take me down a rabbit hole of endless scrolling, I have spent hours just relaxing and scrolling through videos. My phone and TV are distractions even to start studying, I will be watching a show and say oh just one more episode, and then it’s been two hours and I still haven’t even started doing any school work. To counteract this, I have been trying to do schoolwork first instead of relaxing first. I will put my phone on Do Not Disturb, put it in another room entirely, or as said above, set a timer for myself to focus.
I can admit that I am addicted to my phone and use it much MUCH more than I should for personal enjoyment. Scrolling on TikTok is much more appealing than sitting down and studying for calculus and it’s hard to get myself to stop and do the work. For me personally, I am in a long-distance relationship, so my day starts and ends with being on my phone. This also makes it harder to use technology less as it is my only way of communicating with my boyfriend. The important thing to remember about technology is that yes, everything important in our lives is connected to technology, but it is important to find a balance where we can stay in the moment and live our lives not constantly plugged in to the internet. Which is obviously much harder said than done.
