So you either clicked on because you had no idea what “renegade” is or you, like me, have a bit of a TikTok issue. This past year, TikTok has not only been dominating the talk of a lot of people, but has also been dominating how they spend their time. Now I admit I can be really bad about this too, sometimes I just want to sit down and watch a few good TikToks. But then TikTok after TikTok I somehow manage to spend an HOUR on this app. 

 

Our world has made huge steps in the advancement and availability of technology to the point where not having a cellphone is considered not normal. Although there are countless advantages of having technology that allow us to have the world at the tips of our fingers, there are also countless down falls too. 

 

Social Media

Technology provides us with a window to express ourselves to the world through pictures, art, and more, usually doing so through social media. Social media is an amazing tool for so many things. Companies use it to market and people use it to spread positive messages. Yet somehow many people got sucked into a hole of comparisons and judgements. Why don’t I look like this? It is so easy to get swept up into a cycle of self criticism but in reality we never see what is on the other side of the screen. Social media makes it easy to project yourself as someone you’re not. When this spiral starts it can become all about the likes and presenting yourself as perfect and establishing an online identity that is different from your real one. Though this is not to say that social media can’t be a useful tool, it jeans means that we have to be conscious about how we are using it. 

 

Lack of Communication and Meaningful Interaction 

I see this all the time and can admit that from time to time my friends and I are guilty of this. You make plans to hangout with your friends and everyone ends up on their phones. This is one of the most frustrating things to me. Especially because a lot of my friends are so busy with all their extracurriculars that when we do have time together I want to actually BE together, not just on our phones. If you go to a concert or see a video of one now, everyone is watching it through their phones instead of just being in the moment. In this situation people are just trying to capture the moment but by doing this they are actually separating themselves from those around them and not fully experiencing things. 

 

Dependence 

My mom always says that my phone is attached to my hip. For most people my age I think is really accurate- but don’t tell my mom. We have become so dependent on our phones it’s hard to go anywhere without them. Earlier this year I went home to have lunch and left my phone on the counter. I got all the way back to school before I realized that I didn’t have it. I was so upset I forgot it and kept going to reach for my phone and then remembering I didn’t have it. This phenomenon is not uncommon. The issues of phantom vibration (thinking your phone has vibrated when it has not) and separation anxiety are real problems that people are now facing. A school that took away students phones for the school days reported they had to deal with and help treat separation anxiety in students. Moreover, 90% of college students reported experiencing phantom vibrations. This is not a small or isolated issue of dependence but a whole new generation of new technology attached teens and young adults. 

 

I know, I know, half of you are probably calling me a hypocrite and I can admit it, I am guilty of these things too. But when we step back and evaluate how much time we are wasting, spending on our phones, the numbers are scarily high. The average American spends 5.4 hours on their phone… Fourteen to sixteen hour days with five hours spent on our phones is a third of our waking day. Think about everything we could accomplish if we put the phone down for even just an hour or two.