In the twenty-first century, people can find absolutely nothing to do during a power outage. Power outages are really the only time that people actually realize just how much time we spend with electronics. I believe that children and teens today spend far too much time using electronic devices and, as a result, they spend little time with their family. Most children don’t even eat with their family at their dinner table each night. They also don’t spend quality time like simply going to a party or watching a movie with their family. Family relationships crumble because of this. Children fight with their parents and electronics are also keeping children out of shape. If a child spends four hours on the computer daily instead of riding his/her bicycle or going to a friend’s house, they exercise less and become overweight and are not athletic most of the time.
Based on an informal survey of thirty-five, thirteen year old children in my school last year, girls and boys spend and average of about four using electronic devices daily. As far as our daily routines go, we wake up at five-thirty to six in the morning for school, shower, eat, and then go to school. Our school day is a total about seven to seven and a half hours. We get home by about three in the afternoon. We then do our homework and then spend some time using an electronic device until about six in the evening. From there we eat dinner, usually without our families, and then spend any time before we go to bed watching television. In this type of schedule, there isn’t much time spent with our families, or our friends.
My survey revealed that most teens that spend around or slightly more than the average time with electronics did not have an electronic in their top three favorite activities. These teens had sports, friends, and music in their list of favorites. This question revealed that many teens use electronics simply because they cannot find something more interesting to do. People have survived without the computer and television, but today we don’t try to because the playing on the computer or watching television requires less work to do. What ever happened to reading, writing, and outdoor activities? But the real question is that if the world had no electronics, what would teenagers do?