By Cina Huston
On July 20 of 2024, I deleted Snapchat after 4 years of constant use.
On July 21, I checked my phone at least 50 times to see if a notification was on my screen.
On July 22, I checked 49 times.
One July 23, I turned off my phone.
I conducted this as an experiment on myself. I mean, I said I wasn’t addicted, so what was happening to me? Why was my growing impulse to receive a snap so strong, and why did I feel so alone when these notifications aren’t rolling in from people I didn’t even know, and worst of all, why did I care?
Question: What are the real effects? I mean, everyone knows the saying, “It’s bad for you” and “Apps like those shorten your attention span in school,” but the real question is, “What else?”
What about your relationships, loyalty, and inability to put down your phone at the table?
What about 20 years from now? How is your iPhone addiction pushing you closer and closer off the bridge of reality and a healthy mind?
Inside the brain
An idea that is new to pretty much no one is the concept that quick reward apps such as Snapchat and TikTok are slowly deteriorating our youths attention span. Studies at the University of Chapel Hill revel that constant checking of media in anticipation of a short and surface-level social scenario can truly inhibit the ability to form cohesive bonds with people. In other words, this form of short stimulation prevents proper relations from forming, such as deep, trusting friendships, and not just being #1 on each other’s best friends list. The instant replies and snapping back and forth cause a false sense of connection, which quickly dies out when the 2 actually meet in person, and I know I can’t be the only one who would stay up talking to someone all night, just for them to pass in the hallway without even making eye contact. These types of interactions would leave me reflecting a deep feeling of rejection and once again reveling that false bond that these quick-available apps form.
Connections also serve in the reward pathway of the brain in terms of positive reinforcement. The concept of sending ceiling pics back and forth might seem dumb to the older generation, but getting such a picture of someone’s popcorn ceiling whom you truly admire or blackley just find attractive can cause you to feel an emotion of want, causing you to do it again and again. But once you delete the app and those messages stop coming through, your phone quickly feels empty, and since everyone spends so much time on their devices, you end up feeling empty, too. And if that’s not bad enough, this puts our brains in a constant state of multitasking, thus hindering our ability to focus on long-term concepts such as a class lecture, which are crystal abilities you need to obtain when trying to succeed and excel in society. With the concept of multitasking, *MAJOR NEWS FLASH* The human brain has scientifically been proven to work less efficiently when multitasking, so being in a constant state of social media surfing causes irreparable damage, not just to your physical and mental health too.
The change
When Chappell Hill conducted a study of observing how many times a student in high school checked three phones, they found that 78% of the teens report checking their mobile devices at least hourly. To put this in perspective, in one year, checking your phone for just 10 minutes at the bare minimum is a total of 3650 minutes, or around 61 hours spent on your phone yearly, and just to reiterate, this is checking it once a day, so just imagine the number of someone who picks up the phone every 5 minutes.
Now, the real problem. These apps are available to children all around the world, and as their brains undergo a fundamental shift that seeks them to crave social validation, these apps’ algorithm has found a way to fulfill that urge, making it one of society’s worst antagonist addictions to date.
We are truly the first generation to have grown up with these apps just finger taps away, and the American Psychology Association states that these apps are slowly taking over our autonomous control in social relationships and interactions, taking kids to find the validation online by their peers in the form of lines, comments, and shower messages, such as a fire emoji.
My experience.
After deleting the snap, I somehow found myself feeling “behind” the trends and whatever meme was going viral at the time. My friends would talk about all the guys they were talking to on Snapchat and how all of them 100% wanted them.
But, in real life, I felt none of that. Once I deleted the app, the small validation of the feeling of benign behavior quickly left me, making me feel less than and more alone. It wasn’t until months later that I truly started to realize how miniscule these apparent relationships on apps such as this were, and now one of my favorite sayings when one of my friends brings up a guy she’s talking to on Snap is “he’s probably snapping the same thing he is sending you to 30 other girls.” Though my statement is always met with disposition grunts and dissatisfaction that you won’t feed into their delusion, the fact is 100% true.
Social media makes it hard to establish these real feelings of caring, so transitioning from an app filled with love and validation to real life where these people aren’t talking to you can be hard and make you feel unwanted and less than if you think others online aren’t feeling the same thing, even though they are.
What happened after I deleted the app?
I switched to Instagram; I lost relationships; I found a real one; I was focusing over the phone instead, and I wanted to do more, such as write this blog.
Now, I’m not saying don’t be on Snapchat; just be aware of how deep you are getting into these relationships, as your brain is always craving the small social interaction, and learning to distinguish them and set boundaries can be difficult.
Khiron clinic studied the idea of D.O.E.S. (dopamine, serotine, oxytocin, and endorphins) as the main chemical playing into the inability to show true discomfort and the feeling that you have to fit in, which can also make unselecting messages and oversharing common when trying to look for that little bit of “want” by the person you talking to.
You need to learn boundaries, when you really want to take these relationships, and how deep they are. Your brain will always contradict cutting people off since I wanted you to keep talking and talking, but you need to know.
How deep can this go? And where is the limit?