On average, teenagers spend seven hours and twenty-two minutes on their phones each day. For context, the Wilson school day is roughly six hours and forty minutes. Teenagers are spending more time on their phones than they are at school.
Which brings us to Homecoming. Homecoming, which is meant to unify the school and bring out our bulldog spirit, was tarnished by phones glued to everyone’s hands. You couldn’t take five steps without seeing people absorbed in their devices.
It wasn’t just taking pictures of the amazingly decorated venue—that would be understandable. Instead, people would spend a few seconds filming a dance for Tik Tok, then stop dancing once the phone was down. Phones took the fun out of the dance by turning the entire event into a social media performance.
Being highschoolers with social media, we know that TikTok is not completely bad. People use TikTok to share funny videos to friends, keep in touch with people living far from them and to have community; however, not every single thing needs to be recorded. Moments are better when they are kept intimate, but when you share everything with your followers, you don’t have anything for you or for your closest friends.
We saw a lot of people dancing to music to post the moment to Snapchat, then going back to standing awkwardly when the camera was off. Not only were these people taking up all the space on the dance floor, but we felt that they made the vibe of the Homecoming Dance more of a Homecoming Funeral. We expected to dance, but it felt like there was no place for that, and I don’t know how one boogies down to mumble rap and heartbroken, no-beat-having country, but that problem is for another day.
One of the other things I don’t think we were expecting to see as much as we were was the rampant texting. To shoot one quick text to your family saying that you’d arrived safely is normal, but spending the whole time typing out long paragraphs to someone standing a few feet away is bizarre. Likewise, people weren’t even doing it at the tables available; they were doing it right in the middle of the dance floor. Texting in the middle of the dance floor makes your problem everyone else’s problem.
It could be argued that this is something about our generation as a whole. Even surrounded by hundreds of people, with a playlist that students helped put together, most of the room couldn’t resist the allure of their phones.
We do believe that the phone rules—not having them out in the Lower House and not having them out during class in the Upper House—have helped Wilson immensely, but that’s during school hours. Outside of school hours, like at a dance such as Homecoming, there is nothing that our school can do to limit our screen time. Our generation’s phone addictions are something that we are going to have to fix ourselves.
It’s hard, we know, but if we can hardly go forty minutes in a class without doom-scrolling on TikTok, what are we going to do at our future jobs? Are we going to pull out phones when we feel just a pinch bored? Open TikTok mid-heart surgery? Snap our friends while we’re at a business meeting?
This is not directed at the homecoming committee—this has nothing to do with the talented individuals that put this event together—it was the phones that ruined the experience. If we can’t put our phones down for a two-hour dance, how are we going to put them down for the rest of our lives?
Sources: https://abcnews.go.com/US/teens-spend-hours-screens-entertainment-day-report/story?id=66607555
