November 13, 2022
Evanston, Ill.
Evanston Township High School
Vol. 106, Issue 4
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Avoiding social media in an ever-connected world By Isabella Martinez, Tanya Weisman Staff Writers As platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and relatively new platforms like BeReal continue to rise in popularity, the grip that social media has on students tightens. Many teenagers have lives that revolve around their screens, but others decide to distance themselves from certain platforms. Some may feel juggling school, clubs and relationships challenging when having a constant distraction in their pocket. “When I had TikTok, I would sit there for a couple of hours at a time without realizing it. My grades actually dropped the
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quarter of the year I had Tik Tok by about a grade level per class. When I deleted it, my grades went back up, because I spent more productive time studying,” says sophomore Elliot Obuch. After difficulties focusing in school, he made the decision to go partially social media-free by deleting all unnecessary platforms from his phone. This freed up a surprising amount of time to focus on school work. “People are a lot less productive and have shorter attention spans due to the easy access to short-form content,” says Obuch. He feels that, if students are constantly receiving new entertainment at such a rapid rate through their devices, they will slowly become less accustomed to working on long-term proj-
ects in the classroom. To build stronger connections in her classroom, ETHS English teacher, Elizabeth Hartley, has a strong no cell phone policy. “The worst effect cell phones have on students is that your eyes are looking down at you device while you are going through your whole life. Usually, you have earphones in so you can’t even hear or socialize. People around you will say hello, and you won’t even know they are there. [Devices] check you out of the community and real social interactions more effectively than putting you in a prison cell.” Hartley says. She feels it is crucial to recreate the missing human connections that students may have lost over the pandemic.
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“Last year was the worst year of my career. Mostly because I had four sections of sophomores that had been isolated for a year, and they literally moved through the halls like zombies. They didn’t know how to communicate, they didn’t know how to talk, and didn’t know to look people in the eye. I had sophomores trying to convince me that they were being social, they were just being social on their screens. They told me they didn’t want to come to school, because they didn’t want to be around people. They just wanted to be in their rooms by themselves. I almost didn’t come back this year, I almost quit.” continues Hartley. Continued on page 9
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