Walking through the halls, there is a constant wave of students glued to their phones. Cancelling out all background distractions, their attention is dominated by social media, watching new things pop up in their feed. TikTok and Instagram Reels have taken over teens across the country with videos targeted at students with the main goal of keeping them hooked. The social media algorithms are specifically designed to continue to pull users in, with videos similar to ones that they had previously liked.

Doom-scrolling is the act of spending excessive time on social media viewing short videos of content. Students often fall into this addictive habit during school hours. The ease of opening an entertaining social media app instead of finishing a five-point Practice Prep assignment is very enticing. Most students resort to doom-scrolling instead of doing anything productive when they have free time.

“I lose countless hours just scrolling on my phone when I should be doing schoolwork,” junior Ian Perry said. “Procrastination will be the death of us.”

Regardless of the consequences the scroller faces, students around the doom-scroller are also subject to distraction. The surrounding students are tempted to pick up their phones and start to scroll as well.

“If the kid next to me is on TikTok and I’m trying to do my work, it’s nearly impossible to focus,” senior Connor Mcgee said.

Doom-scrolling is not only detrimental to completing school-work, but also affects afterschool activities. Extracurriculars such as sports or clubs are undermined by doom-scrolling. This takes up valuable time that is scarce for most high school students.

“Once I start on my phone, it’s nearly impossible to get off and go back to what I should be doing,” sophomore Drew Joncas said.

TikTok and Instagram have made minimal attempts to set limits on their own apps respectively, creating one-hour blocks that alert the user when they have reached the one-hour limit. Although it’s helpful to know when you have been on the app for a long period of time, a simple tap of the ‘continue’ button is the only thing between the student and the doom-scroll.

Jan. 18 marked the day where over 170 million Americans thought their hours of Tik-Tok scrolling would come to an end. A landmark case looked to ban Tik-Tok on American servers. Although President Trump has issued an executive order to prolong the life of TikTok, the 15 hours without having access to this massive social media platform was certainly eye-opening.

“When TikTok got banned I was super upset and kept trying to get back into the app since I wasn’t used to it not being unavailable,” junior Yael Saltsman said. “At least I had reels to keep me entertained.”

There is no certain way to completely prevent doom-scrolling. Boredom is inevitable in school, and students are likely to take out their phones and revert to social media. Schools have tried to implement strict phone policies, but this only intensifies the gratification of scrolling .

A more efficient way to limit doom-scrolling would be to designate ‘work time’. Planning for a 30-35 minute period where students agree not to use their phones would be a much more realistic policy than banning phones completely. Students would limit their phone usage to a few minutes, instead of scrolling on and off for the entire period. This would be a better alternative to the current school phone policies, which when it comes down to the average classroom, are never truly enforced.

The root cause of doom-scrolling stems much deeper than just teens being teens. Teens are bound to get bored, but the solution to this boredom can not solely be scrolling. Doom-scrolling can be considered part of the greater reason why our generation suffers from problems like short attention spans and bad sleep habits. It certainly fuels the addiction to social media. As students we must fight the urge to fall into this detrimental habit.