I enjoy going to the mall. I get to see a wide selection of stores, different types of people, maybe some great-smelling restaurants in the food court. But standing out like the kaaba in Mecca, I can never ever miss the place: The Apple Store. The fully white interior and exterior bombard my eyes and brain with a sense of wonder, until I see the black mirrors lying inside. Then I look back around the mall, and I notice the small things. I see someone staring at their Tiktok, walking, as their thumb slides down to up again and again. I see two friends’ energetic conversation interrupted by the ping of a Snapchat notification. I see a teenage girl holding up a cute outfit in the mirror wondering if she’ll look good enough to post on her Instagram. And then I start to see those things in other places. My friend worrying about her crush not liking her story. My mom scrolling during family dinner. Even me wondering why no one liked my Tumblr or Twitter posts. After so many observations like this, I’ve determined that us teenagers should limit our social media use as much as possible.

I want to make it clear that technology itself is not the enemy. It has helped us so much and it is virtually indispensable for a reason. On top of that, social media isn’t all bad. During and after the pandemic, it was the way people around the world formed new friendships and communities and how many teens find people with the same interests as them. However, this comes at a cost. Finding community morphs into consuming content, and suddenly the user turns into a human sloth. Teens also happen to come with their own variety of quirks like anxiety, self-consciousness, and lack of emotional or decision regulation, and most aspects of social media turn these up to one hundred. Then, along with these, users start to crave dopamine, a sense of reward, and doing anything else becomes near impossible. The truth of the matter is none of this is coincidence. Companies design social media to make sure their users, especially teenagers, stay hooked, giving them money until the end of time. As the saying goes, “Start ‘em young.” But we don’t have to submit to companies stealing our brains and treating them as cattle. We can make the conscious effort to put the phone down during an idle moment. We can look at the world around us. We can call the people we love. We can talk to strangers. We can retrain our brains to do anything we put our mind to. We can deter the demon that might destroy us all.