Tik-Tok and other social media platforms have become vital aspects of society. As technology and the internet continue to gain popularity, students’ attention spans are shortening. The National Library of Medicine says, “Across the two bodies of literature, a complex situation emerges: the use of digital technologies for learning is negatively affecting the brain.” With students’ continuous use of the internet, they are destroying their ability to focus for longer than a few minutes on a task.

“Damage to the attention network of the brain can result in remarkable attentional deficits,” says the National Library of Medicine. With the way society is going, people are continuing to harm their brains from internet use without even recognizing it. For example, when the right side of the prefrontal cortex is affected, voluntary allocation of attention can cause a loss of awareness of visual information towards the left space. This can cause problems, such as only being able to read the right side of a book. Understanding how severe it can be to damage the attention span, we need to fix our students’ ability to concentrate so we can ensure positive cognitive development.    

 “Many students seem to be aware of social media’s effects,” says Camila Dominguez, a student who attends Danbury High School. She believes that “students are so focused on what’s going on on social media rather than focusing on school and their grades.” With that being said, she believes that the length of Tik-Tok correlates to students’ attention spans. “We have been so used to watching 2-second videos that when we are placed in front of a 5-minute video, we can’t focus and find it boring.” Teachers and parents need to “prompt less Tik-Tok time and prompt more engaging school activities.” By doing this, we can get more individuals off their phones and, overall, better our students academically.