{"id":3927,"date":"2026-10-21T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T17:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/?p=3927"},"modified":"2026-10-21T16:06:02","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T21:06:02","slug":"put-social-media-back-in-its-place-the-effect-of-social-media-in-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/2026\/10\/21\/put-social-media-back-in-its-place-the-effect-of-social-media-in-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Put Social Media Back In Its Place: The Effect Of Social Media On Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

Design By: Athena Gonzalez<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\n

You open TikTok for what\u2019s supposed to be a five-minute break from homework. One video leads to another, then another, and the comments become a distraction of their own, complete with a stranger inexplicably arguing about something you don\u2019t care about. You tell yourself you\u2019ll stop after this one. Then the next video starts playing before you\u2019ve even decided.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Before you know it, 45 minutes have disappeared with nothing to show for them. You didn\u2019t enjoy most of it, and you couldn\u2019t name half of what you watched.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Your assignment is still sitting there untouched.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, so is your screen time report.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For some students at JCCC, the problem with social media isn\u2019t just what appears on their screens but how difficult it can be to look away.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Anthony Giron is one of them. He recently noticed himself getting caught up in doomscrolling, losing time to videos and comments that pulled him away from schoolwork. What bothered him was what that time was replacing.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely didn\u2019t like feeling like it was taking me away from things I enjoyed,\u201d Giron wrote in an email.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Giron has taken breaks from social media before, but giving it up for good was never the plan when so much of his communication with friends and family happens there. Instead, he started setting screen-time limits for himself. The goal wasn\u2019t to cut social media out of his life, just to put it back in its place.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI just get on here and there now,\u201d Giron wrote, \u201cnot spending hours like I was before on it.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Erin O\u2019Connor, another student, knows the late-night version of the scroll all too well. Some nights, she\u2019ll search YouTube endlessly for the perfect video to fall asleep to, even though she keeps the volume so low it\u2019s barely audible once she drifts off. According to O\u2019Connor, she can stay stuck for hours, long after she first lies down.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The toll goes beyond lost sleep. Doomscrolling can exacerbate her anxiety and depression symptoms, along with her OCD tendencies, O\u2019Connor shared.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think of doom scrolling as a tar pit,\u201d O\u2019Connor wrote in an email.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The image goes deeper than it sounds. Tar pits aren\u2019t actually hot, O\u2019Connor pointed out. They\u2019re about the same temperature as the air around them, so by the time you realize you\u2019re stuck, breaking free can feel nearly impossible.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the comparison trap. O\u2019Connor doesn\u2019t usually measure her life against other people\u2019s posts, and she tries to remember that what people share online is only a fraction of their lives, and a highly curated one at that. Still, the more time she spends on social media, the more likely she is to start comparing herself to others.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Social media mostly shows the highlight reel, making it tempting to hold an ordinary Tuesday up against someone else\u2019s best day.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Giron doesn\u2019t feel that pressure to perform. He wants people to see the same person online that they see in person.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy goal is not to make a fool of myself online and then be seen in person and act totally different because that to me is just weird,\u201d Giron wrote.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For O\u2019Connor, the pull has been harder to resist. For a long time, she prided herself on knowing a little about everything, and she idolized online creators who presented themselves as experts in their corners of the internet.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI fell for it almost every time, hook, line and sinker,\u201d O\u2019Connor added. \u201cNowadays, I\u2019m a bit more skeptical of what sort of content I consume.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, she understands why so many people keep scrolling anyway.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI have a great deal of empathy for those who simply want to turn off their brains and scroll,\u201d O\u2019Connor wrote.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Part of the problem, in O\u2019Connor\u2019s view, is that most platforms are \u201cpulling out all the stops to keep you online as long as possible.\u201d For students already balancing classes and work, losing an hour online becomes one more source of stress in an already full schedule.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Both Giron and O\u2019Connor have found that setting boundaries helps, though they approach it differently.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Giron\u2019s approach comes down to timing. He recommends waiting until assignments are finished or until the weekend before getting on social media, so going online becomes a deliberate choice rather than a reflex.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNot getting on it just because, and then wasting hours, and then you\u2019re behind on work,\u201d Giron wrote.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor\u2019s approach is about distance. She limits or entirely disables notifications and keeps her phone on the other side of the room. Requiring a long, complicated password every time an app opens can also make it easier to resist the urge to check social media, according to O\u2019Connor.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As someone with ADHD, O\u2019Connor wrote that she is \u201cmore susceptible to some of the features that make social media addicting,\u201d and that her approach is not a one-size-fits-all solution. For her, success has come from remaining uncompromising about how and when social media reaches her.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

None of this means deleting every app. For many students, social media is still how they keep up with friends and stay close to family, and it remains a window into the world around them.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Both Giron and O\u2019Connor still use it. They\u2019ve just changed the terms.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The real challenge is catching the moment a quick scroll stops being a break and quietly starts eating into everything else, whether that\u2019s sleep, schoolwork or the things that used to fill that time.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The image goes deeper than it sounds. Tar pits aren\u2019t actually hot, O\u2019Connor pointed out. They\u2019re about the same temperature as the air around them, so by the time you realize you\u2019re stuck, breaking free can feel nearly impossible.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":3928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[365],"class_list":["post-3927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life"],"author_meta":{"display_name":"Saul Epstein","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/author\/sepstein\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/files\/2026\/10\/social-media-mental-health-graphic-300x200.png","coauthors":[{"link":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/author\/gabrielle-thompson\/","display_name":"Gabrielle Thompson"}],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Life<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Life<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 10 hours ago","modified":"Updated 6 hours ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on October 21, 2026","modified":"Updated on October 21, 2026"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on October 21, 2026 12:00 pm","modified":"Updated on October 21, 2026 4:06 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":365,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"gabrielle-thompson","display_name":"Gabrielle Thompson","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/files\/2026\/10\/social-media-mental-health-graphic.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3927"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3932,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3927\/revisions\/3932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3927"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=3927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}