On Time Wasted

Adam Kozman, Opinion Editor

It is common knowledge that people nowadays are spending more time on electronics than ever, and that everyone’s attention span is lowering. It's obvious and already talked about endlessly, but I would say talking about the time that is being taken away, which could be spent elsewhere, is more important. The time that people 20 years ago had available to them because they never had endless information and entertainment in their pocket as an option. What are we missing out on by spending different pockets of our day on an iPhone?

Say there is a person named Sam for example. Sam has class at 10:00 a.m. Sam lives close to campus, so they get up at 8:00 a.m. and have to go through the usual getting ready for class routine, but Sam’s phone is their alarm clock. It goes off and right after Sam turns off the alarm, they swipe up quickly and check their notifications as they sit up in bed and respond to messages and scroll through a couple posts. Then Sam gets up, not necessarily rushing because they have time, and does whatever Sam has to do to get ready for class. Right after that, Sam opens their phone again and repeats the same process as before. Even as Sam is eating, they are watching something, totally consumed and out of response to an outside environment. Soon, Sam is grabbing their bag and heading out the door and it’s 9:45 a.m. Even as they sit down in class a couple minutes early, they take out their phone and perform the same routine.

It took Sam the whole hour and 45 minutes to get ready for class, which consisted of showering, getting dressed, eating breakfast and getting out the door. It should not have taken Sam that much time to do those basic tasks, but little breaks in between elongated their process and just wasted a lot of time when Sam could have done maybe a quick assignment or looked over notes quickly. It doesn’t even have to be productive things, Sam could have very well sat down and did a hobby. Say Sam likes to play piano, they could’ve at least done that for a little bit, worked on something they are passionate about for a sliver of time in the morning instead of watching some content they won’t remember after they have seen it.

It is easy to just say, “oh, I should watch a YouTube video instead of reels,” and use “it’s killing my attention span” as the reason when the pressing problem at hand isn’t your ability to sit down and read a book. It’s the time it’s eating out of your life when you could have used that time to practice something you like, eat with a friend or play with your dog.