COMMENT: Social media’s reign has gone on long enough

Cara Sheerin 

ANYONE over the age of 30 will tell you that kids these days spend too much time on their phones. 

Whether they’re on social media, looking something up on the internet or even just listening to music, older generations will grumble that young people are wasting away their adolescence. 

A quick Google search will show you dozens of articles, statistics and comedy skits showing how braindead the youth of today are becoming with the help of their handheld screens.

However, it is rare that we ask the question: what do young people themselves think? It’s time we got an honest opinion on the matter from the people who use social media the most. 

Growing up as a ‘digital native’, I and many others my age have very few memories of life before smartphones, if any. 

I have some early recollections of playing Mario Kart with my friends at school on the off-chance that I was allowed to bring my DS in, and a handful of occasions when my neighbours would call over to play games on my dad’s PC (yes, an old, beige PC and an ugly one at that). But overall, my childhood was filled with running around playgrounds and imagining fairytale worlds in my head. 

At eight-years-of-age I figured out that the device in my dad’s hand when he would pick me up from school was no longer a Nokia but an iPhone 4S, which I would brag about in the schoolyard for weeks to come. 

Now, not that many years later, I myself am sat next to my own iPhone. It’s hard to imagine a world where I don’t wake up and see four phones sitting face down in the kitchen. It’s even harder to imagine taking the bus in the morning without seeing people with Spotify blaring in their ears and a sign for free Wi-Fi above their heads.  

However, this isn’t the issue with smartphones in the world today. The generation before ours would find it just as challenging to imagine a life without a television or the polio vaccine. Advancing into new eras is something that people have done for centuries, and with each new creation we find something else that we can’t live without. 

The problem that is really at the core of smartphones is how people use them. It’s no surprise that addiction to social media is popular among young and old alike, even if it is more commonplace among the younger generation. According to Common Sense Media, about 70 percent of teenagers use social media multiple times a day. 

When I asked some local teenagers about whether or not they would be able to live without social media for, let’s say, the period of Lent (which is starting on the March 6) Hannah Boylan, a student at Coláiste Ghlór na Mara, Balbriggan, said: “The most I could last is a day or two. During the summer I could go longer because I’d be out with friends.” 

Sorcha Cookman, a TY student from Loreto, Balbriggan, said: “Time passes very quickly on social media. It’s likely down to the simple fact that your feed is constantly refreshed with new content.” 

The reaction to the question was overwhelmingly negative, with many saying that they could last a few weeks at most but likely not the full season. 

Evidently, the reign of social media over our lives has gone on long enough. By restricting ourselves to shorter periods during the day and focusing on real people in our lives, we can hopefully start to move away from the world of tech so many people today are enamoured with.

• Cara Sheerin is a Transition Year student at Loreto Secondary School, Balbriggan.