Social media helps and hurts

Molly Maddock, Reporter

There are 24 hours in a day and teens spend an average of 9 of those hours on some sort of social media.  

And according to the Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, social media is a huge time eater that manipulated people to spend hours on it. A few students filled in the blanks. 

“I spend about 17 hours a day on social media, if Pinterest counts,” sophomore Ella Wilson said. 

She said she spends most of her time looking through artists’ work on Pinterest and Tumblr. Wilson said these platforms help to improve her mood and inspire her to be creative. Not everyone spends as much time on social media as she does or has impacted her as positively.

“It can help me calm down but it can also influence me negatively,” freshman Shelby Zimmerman said.

She said she usually spends about four hours on average on social media platforms like Spotify and Instagram. Zimmerman is an aspiring musician who uses social media to improve on her music but watching other successful artists can lower her mood. 

A way to help with spending too much time on social media is taking a break from your phone for a while.

“I could go a week without my phone,” junior Megan Bell said. 

She said doesn’t have many social media apps but even she would have a hard time giving up her phone. 

Just like the documentary said, we are being manipulated to waste our time on meaningless apps. However, those apps aren’t so meaningless to teenagers. Their social media helps connect them to new people and sparks creativity.