Almost every teenager nowadays owns a cell-phone, that has access to social media on it. Students walk into class checking their favorite apps and texting their friends before any given period begins. Little did Evelyn Lauer’s sophomore honors English classes know that they’d be receiving an assignment that would affect their daily routines and how often they check their favorite social media app.

Lauer assigned her sophomore English classes to read nonfiction articles about the powers of technology and how it’s taking over our lives. After the classes read multiple articles and discussed this topic, Lauer decided to present an idea to the class on Tuesday, August 22nd.

“I thought it’d be interesting to give my students a writing assignment where they could choose the length of time that they’d have to give up their favorite/most used social media application. The app most students gave up was Snapchat and the second most was YouTube. The smallest time someone could give up the app was three hours and the longest was one week,” Lauer said.

For most students, this wasn’t a very easy assignment. Even though it was difficult, some students managed to go a week long without the app. Unfortunately, sophomore Peter Kougias wasn’t one of them.

“I tried to give up Instagram for about three days but I ended up going on it about 8 hours into the assignment without even realizing it,” Kougias said. “It really shows how not only me but everyone is addicted to technology and social media now. It was definitely not easy for me to stay off the app.”

A common dilemma for most of the students was getting notifications from the app or links from friends and group chats.

“I picked YouTube and I went without it for two days,” sophomore Marnie Coresh said. “I thought it was going to be easy but I get notifications and emails from all the YouTubers I’m subscribed to. Out of habit, I clicked on the links and then I’d click out of it because I realized that I shouldn’t be on it. A lot of my friends send me links off YouTube, and I wasn’t able to see any of them unless I accidentally clicked it because I’m so used to it.”

This writing assignment might not have been such a huge impact on all of the students, but for some of them, it really did make a change. It really stood out to everyone how technology breaks the face to face communication with our society.

“I chose to go one entire week without Snapchat,”sophomore Ines Rahmani said. “Throughout the school week it wasn’t unbearable since I had a lot of homework and tennis after school, but occasionally it got difficult without it. Over the weekend, my family got invited by our close family friends to watch the Mayweather against McGregor fight at their house. I left my phone at home because I didn’t want to be on it and when we went to the gathering, and I found out the family had a relative there who only spoke Spanish. Since I’m currently taking Spanish as a language, I decided to try and have a conversation with her and it turned out really well and helped me.”

The assignment was eye opening for many of the students, and it made them realize how technology is a serious addiction. Some students have since decided to make a change in their lifestyle.

“We have so many things to experience in real life and we’re wasting all that time on our phones,” Rahmani said. “I believe that I am attached to my phone and I’d really like to change that now. I’ve been starting to use my cell-phone less and less and I’m slowly adjusting to it. It’s going okay so far. I hope I stick with it.”