NEDERLAND — All too often we grab our phones when we’re bored and fill the time scrolling through seemingly endless streams of content, cherry-picked to stimulate our brains and maintain our attention. 

Though we tell ourselves that we’re “decompressing,” or “relaxing,” or “keeping informed,” the hours of being locked to our screens may be doing more damage than we realize, both to our minds and our free time.  

This is why, throughout the month of February, 12 members of the Mountain Coalition for Youth’s Youth Leadership Academy (YLA) participated in a Screen Time Reduction Challenge, which tested their resolve in the face of our greatest daily temptation—our smart phones—to track the benefits to their mental health and to having more time on their hands. 

“The technology we have today is really addictive—what do you notice when you pay more attention to that fact, when you’re cognizant of your screen time?”

Max Marschhausen, facilitator of the YLA, gave an example of some of the questions he wanted those 12 Nederland Middle-Senior High School students to ask themselves.  

“How hard was it to wean yourself off of your screen, and once you did how did you feel? What did you fill your time with that’s more intentional and allows you to feel like you’re living more in alignment with what you really want?” 

The American Medical Association states that too much screen time, particularly on social media, can lead to new or worsened symptoms of anxiety, stress, and depression, and can interfere with one’s sleep, nutritional intake, and feelings of connection with friends and family. 

“The YLA did some research and found that the average adolescent is spending seven and a half hours on a screen a day, whether that’s on their phone or some other device,” Marschhausen said, explaining the impetus for the creation of the challenge. “They did the math and that translated to 114 days out of every year.”

“From that we looked at the impact that that has on our mental health and sense of connection to our community,” 

The entire challenge, from the spreadsheet used to track screen time numbers to the formula to calculate everything, was developed by the students. The challenge utilized the Opal app, which tracked the students’ phone usage and would limit access to those apps that students found themselves losing the most time to.  

“Part of what kept this challenge manageable for me was making sure not to completely stop using all the apps that distract me,” Halle Peiffer told The Mountain-Ear about her experience competing in the challenge.

“By limiting usage but not completely blocking these apps, I slowly reduced the impulse I felt to pick up my phone.” Peiffer won the first place prize of a midweek Pass to Eldora, which included free equipment rental and ski lesson. She successfully reduced her screen time over the course of 30 days from seven hours a day down to just two. 

“Over the few weeks I participated, I started noticing how often I’d reach for my phone or scroll through Instagram purely out of habit,” NMSHS student Juniper Hall said, earning third place. 

“Most of the time I had no real reason to be on my phone. It was simply to kill time or distract myself. After realizing this, I made an effort to use my phone only when I truly needed to, rather than during inactive moments.” 

“In the past month of the challenge I noticed how much I used my phone just to not feel bored or to try and relax after school,” NMSHS student and second-place winner of the YLA Screen Time Reduction Challenge, Abigail Hess, stated. “In reality it really wasn’t helping.”

Hess explained how, after the challenge, she couldn’t help but notice exactly how scrolling on her phone was making her feel. “Although it felt nice not to be tracking it, I actually felt a lot worse,”

Hess and the other winners continued to describe how the challenge has changed their perspective about their screen time use and opened their eyes to the overall benefits of engaging in less “doomscrolling.”   

“I had more time for other things that are much more fulfilling and I felt a little less brain fog not staring at a screen for so long,” Hess admitted.

Hall detailed all the fulfilling activities they engaged in instead of spending their free time on their phone, including reading, getting ahead with homework, and spending more time with friends and family. 

“By the end, I found that I no longer felt the same urge to open Instagram, and now I actually find it less interesting and sometimes even boring to spend much time on my phone,” Hall said.

“I would recommend reducing screen time to anyone because of the time I found that I didn’t even know I had,” first-place winner Peiffer advised. 

As for whether the challenge will return next year, there is already excitement brewing on the YLA about how the concept can expand with more outreach and more prizes aimed at outdoor and interactive activities, hoping to reach even more students, and maybe some brave adults as well. 

“Our intention is for this to be a year after year thing and to continue the awareness around this issue,” Marschhausen stated. “A big dream too for this challenge would be to have it be for youth and parents. How cool would that be if we were competing as a community to reduce our screen time as a whole.”