By Taylor Cusick
Welcome to The Shield’s annual satire section. Writers use satire to improve a problem in society. Sometimes readers misunderstand the satire as they do not recognize the hyperbole, irony, rhetorical questions, sarcasm, and understatements. A great satirist will also address counter-arguments (the non-satirical solution) with great mockery and sarcasm. Readers may mistake the satirical solution for the actual solution that the writer proposes. The ideas in these satire stories do not necessarily represent the opinions of The Shield or Westmont. If one is confused about satire, please contact a friendly neighborhood English teacher.
Why bother monitoring screen time? All the strenuous effort needed to reduce the time spent on phones would not even have benefits. Constantly filling our brains with stimulation, from music to social media, the teenagers of today luckily never get the chance to have undisturbed thoughts. By exchanging sleeping hours for scrolling time, replacing experiences in nature for world tours on your phone, and absorbing yourself in the selectively reachable standards set by social media, you too can spend more life-improving hours on your phone.
Imagine all the extra scrolling we could do if we switched just a couple hours of sleep for screen time. Scrolling late into the night allows teenagers like myself to fall asleep from pure exhaustion rather than going through the arduous process of laying in bed, suffering endlessly through our own thoughts. Why try processing our days when instead we can simply drain ourselves through hours of scrolling? Then, truly exhausted, we can easily sleep for the remaining three hours of the night, accompanied by the calming noise of a singular, constantly-repeating reel or TikTok.
One of the most important parts of phones is the lifestyle and beauty standards set by these devices. Having these goals, while unreachable for most of today’s teenagers, serve as crucial inspiration for our personal strives. After all, why aim for realistic beauty standards when we have a slim chance of achieving far-fetched goals?
These incredible innovations, phones, were created by us to remove humans from the primitive times of being in nature and exploring the world. Now, we can simply watch a video—with some interesting background music, of course—that gives us a personal tour of Costa Rica from our comfortable, spacious couch. Cantankerous parents urge their teenage children to get off of electronics and enter the “real world,” but these adults do not truly understand the importance of the nonstop stimulation that social media provides. Why go outside when you can view the world from the device placed in your comfortably blanketed lap? By staying inside and remaining on your phone, you are experiencing just as much as if you were to actually travel the world—only in less time!
Annoyingly, some parents insist that their children should utilize their phones’ educational resources. But why should we take advantage of these websites and videos that eliminate some of our necessary scrolling time? Instead, we should be digesting every possible reel we can get our soft, unworked hands on. Phones’ only true purpose, after all, is to provide teenagers with their consistent social media outlet. Plus, who needs an education when you can spend your entire life scrolling on social media.
Monitoring screen time would entirely remove the extremely beneficial aspects of our devices. Teenagers’ lives would be completely shattered, and we would have to learn how to adjust to a world without constant stimulation and connection to the endless scrolling we currently use to fill up our otherwise useless days. We truly must increase our screen time, as life quality would surely increase, too.