Wasted Time; Teens Online for the Wrong Reasons

by: Tara Nolan

Facebook, Instant Messenger, and MySpace are taking over the lives of teens everywhere.
"I literally could not live without Facebook. I check it every time I come back to my room," said Simone Geery, 18, of Montauk, N.Y.
Adults and teens will spend nearly five months in the next year watching television, surfing the Internet, and listening to their personal music devise according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That is approximately 3,518 hours wasted.
"I'd say I waste a solid 30 minutes a day on Facebook, not in one sitting but, randomly throughout the day, three minutes here, five there, ten here and before you know it its one in the morning and I havn't done any work," said Stonehill College student Shane Caffrey, 20, of Scituate, Mass.
In one day, it is estimated that teens spend about 2.9 hours online instant messaging, dowloading music, or on a social network like Facebook. About 65 percent of teens said that they have posted on a social networking site.
While using the Internet for these purposes however, teens are wasting time instead of doing productive work.
"I definitely waste time on Facebook. I would have to say that I spend at least an hour or two on Facebook everyday," said Stonehill College student Katie Domingue, 18, of Somerset, Mass.
The Internet offers many things that help teens with homework but, they are often easily distracted once they begin to visit other websites.
The time spent on the comupter is also taking away from physical activity. In research published in the juornal Pediatrics, moderate physical activity has decreased dramatically from early to late adolescence.
"I just feel like I waste so much of my time on the computer but, it's so hard to resist," said another Stonehill College student Lora Hanley, 18, of Rockland, Maine.

tnolan@student.stonehill.edu