We all know someone, perhaps ourselves, who is constantly behind their phone, tablet, or T.V. Are you aware of the negative side effects excessive screen time can cause? Spending too much time behind a screen can lead to cyber addiction. Side effects of cyber addiction can be: headache, bad temper, blurry vision, depression, weight gain, poor posture, back pain, and it even increases your risk of developing cancer. Children should only be spending one hour or less each day behind a screen and teens and adults should only be behind a screen for two hours or less each day.
Caitlyn Breiten and Josette Villanueva are juniors at Devine High School. They are members of FCCLA where they serve as president and project coordinator. This year they are doing a STAR event called ”Behind the Screens.”
Their goal is to spread awareness on what cyber addiction is and how it can affect you by targeting the students at the middle and high school campuses. They found that these students were spending anywhere between 30-85 hours on their phones each week, when they should only be spending up to 14 hours.
The girls presented to the middle and high school campuses in October and plan to go back in January to follow up with the students to see if their screen time has decreased.
If you have an IPhone and want to see your own screen time, go to settings, screen time, see all activity, and you can see how much time you are spending on your phone. You can even see how long you spend on each app, how many times you picked up your phone, and how many notifications you have gotten. To decrease the amount of time you spend on your phone, you can set timers on each app, through settings, to help you not spend so much time behind a screen.