Less Screen Time, More Sleep Time

By MIRIAM ZUO ‘20

You’ve been there; I’ve been there; even your teachers have been there—faced with a seemingly insurmountable stack of assignments, you sit down, maybe put on a study playlist, and accomplish .... well, that part is a bit unclear. After what feels like hours of hyper-focused work, you’re not exactly sure if you’ve actually finished anything. A couple pages of reading? An introduction to a thousand-word essay? Certainly not as much as you should have. How do we repeatedly lose track of time like this, eager to be more productive but barely progressing?

Chances are, your phone is currently in your other hand, next to you, or somewhere on your person. Various studies, including some conducted by the Pew Research Center, indicate that the average person spends over 4 hours a day on a mobile device. The majority of teens feel as if they spend too much time on their phones, with 31% reporting that cell phone use inhibits their focus in class. But, despite being conscious of their attachment, screen times continue to rise. Even if you’re not actively engaging with your phone, its presence next to you—especially if it’s face-up, notifying you with texts and social media updates—affects your productivity. Studies surrounding phone overuse and declines in productivity are hardly surprising. Still, even though we may reluctantly acknowledge our phones’ detrimental effects on our work and consequently our sleep, change is difficult and motivation is a finicky creature.

Even though many of us would like to bridge the gap between our best, productive intentions and the sadder, more sleep-deprived reality, I doubt sweeping changes will be effective. Psychological research has revealed that our minds are not well-suited for repeatedly enforcing a long-term good that’s perhaps unpleasant in the short-term (i.e. homework) over short bursts of pleasure delivered by our phones. That said, I don’t think we need to acquiesce to countless late nights and scrambles to meet deadlines. In Milton’s challenging academic environment is challenging, we can alleviate some of the associated stress by focusing on small changes. I think our phone use might be a place to start.

Try putting your phone in another room, using a Pomodoro timer, activating airplane mode, or zipping your phone in your backpack. Either way, eliminating the distractions of the small screen during a designated work period could bring us a step closer to regaining control over our “lost” time, and reduce all the hours we spend with our attention split between our homework and our phones. Personally, setting my phone aside when I work has significantly reduced the time I take to finish my work, bringing much-needed balance to an otherwise busy senior year.

Milton Academy has high standards for its students, and with those standards comes a sizeable workload. Finishing this work in a timely manner sometimes seems impossible, inspiring recurring rounds of complaints, but some of this stress should be attributed to our phone dependence. Every ding disrupts our focus, prolonging time spent working on assignments and decreasing time socializing, sleeping, or partaking in something we actually enjoy.

Image courtesy of sciencenewsforstudents.org