Debate Time: Does a Teenager Waste Time on Social Media Without this Important Mindset?

Debate Time: Does a Teenager Waste Time on Social 

Media Without this Important Mindset? 

“In truth a family is what you make it. It is made strong, not by number of heads counted at the dinner table, but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you share, by the commitment of time, caring, and love you show to one another, and by the hopes for the future you have as individuals and as a unit.” 

Marge Kennedy...he Single Parent Family

Recently, a group of us parents had a debate:

How many hours does my teen daughter use her cell phone?

Is she wasting or spending time on social media?

One parent did not like the idea that her daughter was wasting time on the internet and preferred to call it spending time. “It’s a kinder way of putting it to avoid bad feelings,” she said.

I’ve always believed in the Big Picture scenario and divided a piece of paper into two columns for brainstorming. One heading said Wasting Time; the second heading said Spending Time. The implication with spending anything was that there was some kind of return on investment.

There was considerable debate where to put some ideas. See if you would agree.

Wasting Time

Scrolling Instagram, texting, posting Snapchat pictures, checking celebrity gossip, playing
video games, message Facebook friends, tweets, dressing up and make-up, dating sites, webcam shows, Netflix  

Spending Time

Write a story or poem, learn to dance, play an instrument, homework, help neighbors, physical sports, try a new recipe, prepare supper, have dinner with family, visit old relatives, animal rescue shelter, relax in the park, talk on the phone, knit a gift

      

The point I wanted to make is that teenagers might not feel there is a difference with how time is managed without a stronger mindset to value time itself. They may not realize that time is their most precious commodity, always moving forward, never backward and once spent it cannot be replayed.

"It's a strange paradox of time, it can only be managed in a very small time frame 

called today, and today can sometimes be sparked by a tinier matter of choice."

Teen Girl Faces Time in the Sand.

In my opinion, some of the most important lessons for every teen girl should be about time management, how to make good choices and respect her one and only timeline.  

Two main reasons:

ONE: It will help parents to encourage their teen daughters to monitor their own daily and weekly time schedules with an inbuilt importance versus nagging. See blog Parents’ Solutions to Wasting Time by Teenagers on Social Media and More about Mindset

TWO: It will help teen girls on a personal, internal basis to appreciate more this amazing overture of time from overarching infinity to precise moment of making a choice.

Perhaps, it’s rather sad to say that as an elder, time can finally be appreciated after a long lifeline when remaining time is shorter and even more precious. However, from a reverse engineering viewpoint, it’s also why it is so important to make sure that teen girls don’t waste their time but learn to use it competently to actualize their abilities and interests.

Therefore, to become competent in any subject matter requires an educated mindset with a set of lessons that move from point A to point B from What I Don’t Know about Time to What I Understand More about Time.  Most importantly, this new mindset is a personal realization to start replacing the conditioned drive to stay plugged into the cellphone for hours at a time.  

This is the reason why at the end of this story, there are several lesson plans for teen girls to practice different components of time: 

Show some Love for your Brain

Real Time Connections to my True Self

My Timeline and Rites of Passage

My Calendar of Time Experience

Practice making Smart Choices  

Practice difference of Choice, Decision and Habit

Compare Screen Time vs Real Time

Design personal Time Mantra - artistic

At this point, developing a strong positive mindset may be an interesting theory but what if it works because there is no other common denominator that applies to all teenagers?

 What if, teen girls may discover that time is as valuable, if not, more valuable than social media? It would be a mind-breaking revelation and transformation.

It’s your turn to join the debate: What do you think?

Do teen girls waste time or spend time on their cellphones?  

Can a stronger mindset about value of Time help to make smarter choices?

Questions and comments are important and always appreciated.

Annemarie Berukoff
amarie10@gmail.com
833 471 4661

"In fact, let me take a step back. People have a limit of 24 hours a day. We assume that the noise in our head is in the head of other people like us. But there has never been a society which is so overloaded with noises, sights, and egos through the use of Smart phones and the internet.

So, we think what others want us to think; make quick choices others want us to make, which turn into habits at the end controlled by others. And habits, like well used runways, in the brain, are the hardest chains to break once built. Like I read once, we become carbon copies of present culture. The younger ones are the most vulnerable trying to copy in the wink of an eye.

Remember a choice is not a decision. It is only the spark that begins a decision through multiple steps which may result in forming habits, but that is another discussion."

Ebook Excerpt: Teen Girl Faces Time in the Sand