Fifteen Going on Thirty

Fifteen minutes isn’t that long. It’s not long enough to hold a class or finish an assignment or workout, at least if you want any of those things to mean anything. It can, however, feel like forever at the end of a long lecture or when you really need to go to the bathroom, but the next rest stop isn’t for a few miles. In today’s rapidly moving society and combined with my moderate case of ADHD, sitting and thinking recreationally has become somewhat of an art form rather than a daily practice of mine. Kids my age and I’m sure other ages alike are constantly occupied by something. Rarely do I ever find myself or my peers just sitting still and thinking. More likely I find a book in hand, phone on ear, headphones in, or pencil in fingers. Therefore, to sit still for fifteen minutes felt like thirty. Being left alone with our own thoughts to truly wander has not only become an artform in 2020’s youth but also a lost artform.

During my fifteen minutes I first stressed about the rest of the items on my ‘to do list’ and planned out when and where I was going to complete these assignments. Once that was finished, I still had fourteen and a half minutes, so I searched by brain in search of words to fill time with. I thought about my friends for a while. I thought about how my new friends at school have changed my life and how I miss my old friends and thinking about how they have new friends too and those people have probably changed my friends’ lives in similar manners. Once that was finished and I was down to twelve minutes, I started to ponder the root of the problem.

For me the remaining twelve minutes got down to the important stuff. I thought about why I couldn’t sit still or why I couldn’t be left alone to my own thoughts. For me, it is, though cliché, my phone. My phone holds all the distractions from the immensity of my thoughts, and it holds all the information of the world I am somehow dying to have access too. My phone holds possibly a super urgent, important, emergency call from my mom that has never come in my life before. Our smart phones hold literally the entire knowledge of the world at our fingertips. Once we get accustomed to this way of life it becomes addicting. We are all addicted and its probably impossible to quit. We can, however, reduce the time on our devices and I think we should.

After such a very long fifteen minutes alone, I realized that I need a little break from the fake reality of a handheld screen the size of an index card. There’s no urgency in social media. The texts about silly things from my friends can wait as can the television show I for some reason need to finish. I think I, along with most of the people around me, could really benefit from stepping away from such meaningless activities and focus more time on the people around us. There are so many newly abundant issues that we notice with the social skills of America’s youth and the mental health issues that are spreading like wildfire. I believe that the awareness of the effects on the internet, social media, and our tiny screens at such young ages should be spread more urgently because my generation’s tools for success are paying the price.