My Take on my Personal Screen Time

By: Savanna White

The topic of screen time has been a controversial topic for all since technology has begun to get big. After checking my screen time I was surprised about how much time I spend on my phone and how many hours I spend on specific sites. The other day I spent 3 hours on Tik Tok, which is honestly astonishing to me, but I can tell that I have been on my phone a lot. My second most used app would be Facebook. I use Facebook to keep up to date with my friends' lives and share funny memes. Facebook also tends to be very controversial which is where I see a lot of political memes or news within our country. Although Facebook is not a very reliable source for political topics I find myself looking up these news or political arguments online. I do not usually spend much time looking at anything political because of some issues I had in my past but I do like to be in the know so that I'm not completely out of the loop.

The way we utilize our smartphones will determine everything. Anything can either be positive or negative depending on how it is used. It is impossible to be productive if you solely use your smartphone for web browsing, viewing irrelevant websites, or interacting with friends and random people on social media. However, it can be quite beneficial if you use the same smartphone to learn something new on any learning-based app or are surfing the internet to find out about updates related to your area of interest or to develop your skills. The use of technology can be good and bad. 

I wouldn't say that using your phone to scroll social media is bad it just depends on how often you do it. For me being able to relax and watch a show or just scroll on Tik Tok or Facebook helps at the end of a very long day. I use technology at both work and school. At work, we use a vitals machine to talk about our patients' vitals every four hours. With the vital machine cart, we can get all vitals at the same time. Yes, we could do these vitals manually but, it saves us so much time to be able to do it all at once. We also use computers to put in all these vitals or inputs and outputs so that they are all in one place and anyone who needs access to this information such as the nurses and doctors can see these with just a click of a button. Having technology in the healthcare field has made things much easier. 

If I didn't have the technology when it comes to my school work I don't think I would be as productive as I am. I do all my classes and my assignments on my laptop. With the app canvas, it helps me keep all my assignments and their due dates organized. I also have an iPad that I use to take notes so that I do not have to carry around multiple binders or notebooks with my notes in them. I have found having my iPad has been a big game-changer in my anatomy course this semester. I use it to download the images I need to memorize and label them myself until I can do it with no help. Without technology, I'm not sure if I could accomplish knowing these images as well as I do without technology. 

After looking at the amount of time I spend on my phone and which apps I do I will watch how much time I spend on certain apps. TikTok is one I use way too much and spending 3 hours in one day on it is honestly a little embarrassing. I have been wanting to get better at reading and I have many books piling up that I want to read. I could be doing that instead of scrolling through an app that probably doesn't help my mental health. 

Phones affect dopamine receptors in the same way that all addictive substances do. If there weren't a financial incentive, it would be considered the same as any other illegal substance. Who knows if we will ever be able to pull ourselves out of the corruption, which goes much deeper than we can fathom or control. Although I could take a step back from certain social media apps I do not spend as much time on my phone as I use to. I work full time, am taking 5 classes, and have 2 step kids that I take care of. Between all these things I do not have much time to be on my phone anyway. In the end, I do need to take a step away from my TikTok obsession and find a better way to spend my free time to save my mental health.