Jimenez Loya 1

Jan Jimenez Loya

Dr. George

ENGL 1301

08 October 2024

Children's brains are rotting: Are the portable supercomputers we have today causing

teenagers to decline in their behavior and academics?

When your kids become violent you usually find a reason to blame it on correct? It can

sometimes be friends, video games, TV, or even social media. Another thing that should also be

accounted for is, the environment they are living in, who raises them, and how much freedom

they are given that they shouldn’t have. It has come to th epoint where parents are basically

letting a cellular device, a glass screen raise their child. Letting them play the already addicting

to older teens and adults but also letting them watch shows that are supposed to be addicting but

provide no growth in their learning. The mental and physical health of the children of today is at

stake because of a small piece of metal and glass, there are multiple ways to prevent any sort of

behavioral outbreaks, abnormal emotions, unhealthy emotions, and many other problems caused

by technology. Based upon numerous articles that I have read and have been peer-reviewed by

many others, I have come to present to you why the media has caused a decline in today's

students, and also to give some positives as to why social media can, in some minor ways, be

good. Or should teenagers have the World Wide Web in their hands?

TEENAGE PHYSICAL/MENTAL HEALTH WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

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It is a common saying that kids should get 8 hours of sleep. But the actual number is around 12

to 13. Almost half the day I know, absolutely horrendous. Especially with evidence that shows

that an average teenager gets about 7 to 7 ½ hours of sleep per 24 hours. Based upon an

argument made by Michaell J. Petrilli, in his article “Anxiety, Depression, Less Sleep… and

Poor Academic Behavior?”. Michael gives a great presentation of the evidence that shows the

coincidental decrease in teenagers' sleep and academics, specifically in 8th grade, and the increase

in phone usage in middle/high school. Two graphs are given to show the academic scores and the

amount of hours students are getting each night. Both in public schools and private catholic

schools.

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As you can see, when “smartphone ownership really taking off among adolescents in middle and

high school around 2013. That's also when median achievement on the 8th-grade math test in the

National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP) peaked” (para. 8). The coincidence of the

number of hours that students get and the scores on the NAEP going down when the amount of

teenagers who won a phone shoots up speaks a very loud volume with no words. Whenever you

examine the time stamps within these graphs you all indifferences or abnormalities occur in

2013. Students' scores below the 10th percentile in public schools seem to drop dramatically

whenever the phone ownership numbers skyrocket. Plenty of evidence surrounds us pointing out

the correlation between mobile phone usage and academics but yet, there is so little correlation

between telephones and erratic and abnormal behavior.

SO LITTLE EVIDENCE, AND WHY?

Other than the question of “Why so little evidence”. The better question is does the media

or cinematic material causes abnormal maybe even violent behavior. Most parents and guardians

would probably say yes, especially parents. Based upon the article “Television Violence and

Violent Violent Behavior” written by authors Timothy F. Hartnagel, James J. Teevan, Jr., and

Jennie J. Mc Intyre. Research done by multiple researchers reveals itself to be unreliable due to
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inconsistent results, some researchers say “that television has little, if any, effect in causing

aggressive or deviant behavior in children” (para. 3) while others say “when presented with the

same television stimuli, aggressive children will be aggressive and adjusted children will not”

(para. 3) be aggressive at all. So we can see the inconsistency in the research but why is that?

What can cause some adolescents to act violently by watching certain cinematography while it

does not affect others? Or can it relate to the saying “money doesn’t change you, it only reveals

who you are”? If we can look at it from this angle and also consider the “age” or what grade

level these adolescents may be in what can we differ from it, within those boundaries and

constraints? The article states that “television has an effect only on susceptible teenagers.” (para.

3) and that television can only “feed the malignant impulses that already exist.” (para. 3) But

studies still accumulate results from as high as causing children to commit felonies to children

barely even remembering some of the movies and TV shows they watch. But there is one thing

we can conclude. Your environment that which you are placed or in other terms the cards that

you have been dealt with, can conclude or even prove whether adolescents can become violent

when exposed to cinematography.

BUT HOW CAN WE PREVENT THIS?

So let us recount the things that media of any kind can cause. It can decrease academic

growth or achievements, it can cause sleep deprivation, and it can cause violent, erratic, or

abnormal behavior; but how can we prevent any of this? And what else can it cause? An article

titled “Media Education” published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has given

multiple elaborations and effects of what “too much media” can do. “Media Education”

elaborates on sexual content, alcohol and drugs, and even obesity; explaining how much
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influence the media has on an adolescent's perspective and morals when it comes to these ideas.

According to the AAP, "The average American child... spends 21 hours [a] week viewing

television…” (para. 2) which does not include any of the following: “watching TV[,] listening to

music[, watching] music videos, [playing] video games, or surfing the internet for recreational

purposes,” (para. 2) the AAP concludes that children are more focused on receiving information

instead of looking for information. The article is focused on, as we all should be, pointing our

attention toward how much children spend their day on screens, and how much we should

educate ourselves on the effects of the media on our future.

MENTAL HEALTH IS AFFECTED

The more we examine and look at why the media should be controlled in our homes and

how they affect our children's minds, the worse it seems to be. The relationship between phones

and mental health is a very highly concerning one as well, mental health in our adolescents is one

of the most important things that parents and guardians look at and worry about. “Smartphones,

social media use, and youth mental health”, is an article discussing the effect social media has on

today’s youth and young adults. With the sudden rise in phone ownership in 2013 any other

study or graph you look at or read, you can realize that academics go down, sleep numbers go

down, and mental health wellness goes down. The article states that mental distress “increased

from 24% in 2013, to 34% in 2015 and to 39% in 2017” (para. 1), this cannot be a coincidence.

The health of today's youth is on a thin line of going down, of being the most mentally unhealthy,

most suicidal rates, and the lowest performing students in the past decade and a half.
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CONCLUSION

Through multiple sources and multiple pieces of evidence we can conclude that the

academics and how well our students perform can and are affected by media. Kids spend

dedicated time on these phones just scrolling through medias like TikTok and Instagram, rotting

their brains away to be slowly deteriorated. They spend endless hours getting less sleep for the

constant dopamine release that doesn’t even satisfy them making them want to scroll even more.

Even with the litte reliable data we have we can conclude that media can be susceptable to

certain ages, mainly teenagers. What we also found is that whenever there is a common negative

emotion amid a childs behavior, it can almost be referred as the “money doesn’t change you, it

just shows who you already were” saying; if kids are raised in a bad environment they can be

more susceptible to the media than others would. But, with the right media self education and the

right limits set by parents we can prevent such things from happening; preventing drugs and

alcohol being influence or introduced in the wrong way, or even just fitness influencers. The

media has a very negative afect on the mind, physical, and mental health of adolescents. But

what are we gonna do about it to prevent our kids becoming mindless robots who are glued to

their endless dopamine releaser and still not be satisfied. It makes you wonder whether we

created them to make life easier or if they were ade as part of a plan. The last thing that I can

provide is that technology can only get an average student so far, the question isnt whether theyll

actually learn anything; but rather what are they going to do when all hope is loss and all they

have left is the knowledge they ”learned”.

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Works Cited

Abi-Jaoude, Elia, et al. "Smartphones, Social Media Use and Youth Mental Health." CMAJ:

Canadian Medical Association Journal, vol. 192, no. 6, 10 Feb. 2020, p. E136+. Gale

Academic OneFile, dx.doi.org.hillcollege.idm.oclc.org/10.1503/cmaj.190434. Accessed

27 Sept. 2024.

Hartnagel, Timothy F., et al. "Television Violence and Violent Behavior." Social Forces, vol. 54,

no. 2, 1975, pp. 341-51. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2576638. Accessed 24 Sept.

2024.

"Media Education." Pediatrics, vol. 104, no. 2, Aug. 1999, p. 341. Gale Academic OneFile,

link-gale-com.hillcollege.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/A55720971/AONE?u=txshracd2508&si

d=bookmark-AONE&xid=101f94af. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.

Petrilli, Michael J. "Anxiety, Depression, Less Sleep... and Poor Academic Performance? A

Decade of Smartphone Dominance and Negative NAEP Trends." Education Next, vol.

24, no. 1, 2024, p. 76+. Gale Academic OneFile,

link-gale-com.hillcollege.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/A778102615/AONE?u=txshracd2508&s

id=bookmark-AONE&xid=466c8bf2. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.