Streaks. Looksmaxxing.
Sound familiar? Maybe. If not, it’s not you — it’s (partly) Gen Z. Niche terms like these are becoming increasingly common, as the internet spins an ever-growing web around the lives of teens and young adults today.
Researchers have correlated heavy screen time with poorer mental and social health. The majority of K-12 schools across the U.S. have or are gearing up to implement limits or total bans on cell phone use. Workers have long worried about the effects of artificial intelligence on the future job market.
But for all the confusion and bemoaning that can come along with technology, there’s a more interesting question underneath: What effect does a world full of it have on the people using it the most?
That’s the question CNHI asked nine teens from around the country, seeking to learn how today’s students use technology, why they do it and what they think it means for the future.
Just like technology has all kinds of iterations, the students we interviewed come from a variety of backgrounds, locations, races, genders and grade levels. They are honors students, tech aficionados, activists, school newspaper and yearbook editors, athletes and more.
What they have in common, however, is being a part of a unique generation both expanded and confined by the digital age.
The students who participated in a digital roundtable recently include:
Kadeesh Bridgeman, a junior from Anderson, Indiana.Avery Case, a senior from Woodward, Oklahoma.Liam Casey, a senior from Oneonta, New York.Luke Johnson, a freshman from Tahlequah, Oklahoma.Nate Lambert, a senior from Plattsburgh, New York.Ryan Miller, a senior from Floyds Knob, Indiana.Gibson O’Mealy, a senior from Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.Mehak Sankhla, a junior from North Andover, Massachusetts.Claudia Withey, a senior from Nappanee, Indiana.
CNHI: What devices are you using and what are you using them for?
Case: Oh my gosh. I have the phone, Apple Watch, Kindle, laptop. I have it all, and I use them all pretty frequently.
O’Mealy: I don’t have the full ecosystem, but I do have my phone, and there’s a computer right in front of me, TV is everywhere. There are times when I’m doing something on my laptop, I may have something playing on my computer and then I’ll have music playing on my phone or something.
Casey: I think social media is a big part of personal devices, but also assignments. There are very few paper assignments left; almost everything is online at this point.
CNHI: When you first started on screens, were there any restrictions your parents put on you?
Withey: I got my first phone sometime in elementary school, but it was just for texting and nothing else. Throughout the years, they allowed me to get some social media, but not all of it. A while ago, I would have had a time limit on my phone, but because I use it so much for school or running, I don’t have a limit anymore.
Case: I didn’t get social media until I was finished with my sophomore year. For a while when I was still in middle school, any app that I wanted to download, iCloud would make my mom approve it.
CNHI: What restrictions do your schools put on technology?
Sankhla: Even if I’m at home, on my school computer, I can’t open ChatGPT. Our administration blocks it. For us, in school, you can’t use things on regular wifi on your phone and you can’t access it on your Chromebook.
Bridgeman: For me, we can still use personal devices until next year, when they’re putting in a law where you can’t use personal devices in school at all. I can go on my iPad during school and use ChatGPT, or I could use games or watch movies while on the school wifi. Using just my Chromebook, I am not able to use ChatGPT or go on Netflix.
O’Mealy: At least in Pennsylvania, it’s a huge legal issue with the school’s restrictions on their wifi networks. Most social media is banned, and there are even some research websites that can be banned. It seems a little indiscriminate, some of the things that are restricted. We do not have a cell phone ban, but it’s almost surely going to pass and take effect in the next school year.
CNHI: How do you think these restrictions, or lack thereof, impact your experience in school?
Lambert: It is crazy this year. In class, I don’t see a phone from 8 a.m. to 2:40 p.m. in the afternoon. For those of you who next year will have to deal with cell phone bans, I encourage you to look around the classroom now and see the amount of kids who are on their devices and compare that to what it is next year, because it is unbelievably different.
Case: I don’t think that having Chromebooks and laptops in high school is as bad, because a lot of us are taking college courses and we need to be on Blackboard and stuff like that. But when you put a laptop in the hands of an 8-year-old, and the laptop has autocorrect and Grammarly, the eight-year-old doesn’t get to feel the weight of making a mistake because the laptop corrects the mistake for him or her.
Miller: I think some of these blocks are necessary. At the same time, I do wish there were more conversation that you could have with your admin or the district about, ‘Hey, I need these sites.’ In newspaper [class], if I need to go on social media to look at a quote or talk to a source, I have to email my advisor to ask if she could get that for me, which takes so much more time.
CNHI: What is your relationship to social media, and what effects do you feel mentally and physically?
Johnson: For me, social media is exhausting. In elementary and a little bit of middle school, whenever school ended, that was it — the gossip and popularity contests ended at 3 o’clock. But now it continues on into the home, and it’s extremely hard to escape it.
Sankhla: I actually had really strict parents, so I wasn’t allowed any social media until my sophomore year. I did feel like I was missing out on a lot, but now that I have social media, I’m actually grateful for not having access to social media at a young age. Now, I’m more cautious about the amount of time I spend. I’m just as susceptible to doomscrolling, but I don’t find myself automatically going to social media as much, and that’s helped me have so much time in my day.
CNHI: With the presence of social media, we see more students facing situations of peer pressure, bullying and poor mental health. How does this change the way you think about those issues?
Bridgeman: When I was a lot younger, a kid who was a fourth-grader at my school committed suicide because of cyberbullying, and it just changed my idea of it. We don’t always see people’s true colors — someone smiles at you in the hallway, but on social media, they’re talking bad about you behind your back. I feel like social media is a constraint on our lives that can open up our vision to things, but it really holds us down when we take in too much negativity from the people around us.
Miller: I think any situation where a kid is forced to commit some action because of cyberbullying, that’s awful. But I think social media is not always used for, but has the potential to be used for good in that space. I see a lot of people sharing on their [Instagram] story things about mental health awareness month and ways you can reach out if you’re going through something. I think there are a lot of ways it can be used for harm, but there are a lot of ways I’ve seen it be used for good.
Casey: People aren’t being exposed to conflicting viewpoints and different people as much. If they want to stay in a niche and stay in a community, it’s a lot easier. That’s making it so much easier for them to bully people and have an emotional block to it.