Vineeth K Kolarath
For many of us, the phone is the first thing we reach for in the morning and the last thing we put down at night.
It wakes us up. It carries our classes, our friends, our news, our music and even our money. It answers questions, shows us the way and keeps us company during a long bus ride.
That is a remarkable amount of power to hold in one hand.
This is not an argument against phones, screens or the internet. I use them every day. I build things with technology, and I know how useful it can be.
But I have come to think that there is a more important question than how many hours we spend looking at a screen.
It is this:
Who is in charge: you, or the screen?
Your attention is valuable
Think about how you use your phone.
You open it to check one message. A notification appears. You look at it, then notice a video underneath. One video leads to another. Before you realise it, twenty minutes have passed.
You did not plan to spend that time there. It just happened.
Many advertising-supported apps earn money by showing advertisements. The longer people stay, the more opportunities there may be to show them ads. Services also use information about how people interact with content to decide what to recommend.
Some common features make it easier to keep going.
A feed that never ends gives you no natural stopping point. A video that starts playing the next one removes the need to make another choice. A notification pulls your attention away from whatever you were doing.
These features are not necessarily harmful in every situation. But they can make it harder to notice when you have spent longer than you intended.
And that is not a sign of weakness. These are carefully designed digital experiences, often developed by people who understand how users behave.
Once you notice what is happening, you can make a few choices of your own.
Turn off notifications from apps that do not need your immediate attention. Keep your phone out of reach while studying. Before opening an app, decide what you want to do there. When you have done it, close it.
You do not have to change everything at once.
Even one small habit can help you take back some control of your attention.
Sleep is not wasted time
Late at night, the phone can become especially tempting.
The house is quiet. The day's work is over. You tell yourself that you will watch just one more video.
Then you look at the clock.
An hour has passed.
Sleep is not time that your body simply switches off. It is essential for recovery. It also supports memory, learning, concentration and emotional balance.
For teenagers between 13 and 18, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends eight to ten hours of sleep each night. Getting too little can make it harder to concentrate, remember things and manage emotions. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also publishes a page on teenage sleep.
A simple habit is worth trying: let the phone go to sleep before you do.
Charge it away from your bed if you can. Use a separate alarm clock if you need one. Give yourself some quiet time without a screen before going to sleep.
You may find that the next morning feels a little easier.
Other people's best moments
Social media lets us see what is happening in other people's lives.
A friend's holiday photographs. Someone receiving an award. A celebration, a new phone, a beautiful meal or a perfect-looking picture.
But these are only the moments people choose to share.
We rarely see the ordinary days behind them. The difficult mornings, the disappointments, the unfinished work or the things that did not go as planned.
Sometimes, we compare their best moments with our ordinary days.
Our tired mornings. Our examination marks. Our simple lunch. Our own unfinished plans.
It is an unfair comparison, but it can still affect how we feel about ourselves.
A social media feed is not a complete picture of anyone's life. It is a selection of moments, often carefully chosen.
So pay attention to how different accounts make you feel. If certain content regularly leaves you feeling inadequate or unhappy, you can mute it, unfollow it or simply spend less time there.
You are allowed to choose what you give your attention to.
What you share can travel further
Online, information can travel much further than we expect.
A message sent in anger can be saved and forwarded. A photograph shared with one person can reach many others. A small detail in a post may reveal more about your life than you intended.
Once something has been copied or shared, getting it back under your control can be difficult.
That is why a few habits are worth building.
Think before you post.
Would you be comfortable if your parents, teachers or someone you do not know saw this? Would you still be comfortable with it tomorrow?
You do not need to treat every post as a permanent public record. But it is wise to think about where it might travel.
Protect your private details.
Your address, phone number, school timings, passwords and one-time passwords (OTPs) should stay private.
Never share your password, PIN, OTP or card security details with someone who contacts you by phone, message or email. Your bank and genuine financial institutions will not ask you to disclose these confidential details.
Be particularly careful with links that ask you to log in, make a payment or share personal information.
Be careful with strangers.
People online are not always who they claim to be. Someone who seems friendly in a chat may not be the person they say they are.
Do not agree to meet someone you know only online without discussing it with a trusted adult. Never let anyone pressure you into sharing photographs, personal details or anything that makes you uncomfortable.
Ask for help early.
If someone threatens you, blackmails you, shares private photographs or cheats you out of money online, do not try to handle it alone.
Tell a trusted adult. Keep relevant messages and screenshots if it is safe to do so. Do not delete evidence in a hurry.
In India, financial cyber fraud can be reported through the national cybercrime helpline, 1930, or the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.
If money has been taken from your account, report it as quickly as possible. A quick report may help the authorities and financial institutions take action, although recovery is not guaranteed.
The same caution applies to AI chatbots. In Questions Students Asked Me About AI, I suggested treating an AI chat like a conversation in a public place.
It can be useful. But that does not mean you should share everything with it.
Not everything you read is true
Imagine a message arriving in your family WhatsApp group.
It is shocking. It sounds urgent. Someone has forwarded it with a warning that everyone should share it immediately. Several people have already passed it on.
What do you do?
Before forwarding it, pause.
False information often spreads by making people feel something strongly. It may create fear, anger, excitement or a sense of urgency. When a message makes you feel that you must share it immediately, that is a good reason to slow down.
There is a useful method that professional fact-checkers use.
Researchers at Stanford University, including Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew, studied how professional fact-checkers evaluated unfamiliar websites. They found that fact-checkers did something quite different from simply reading a page carefully and deciding whether it looked trustworthy.
They opened other websites and searched for information about the source and its claims. The researchers called this approach lateral reading.
Instead of relying only on what a website says about itself, you look outside it to see what other reliable sources say.
You can do the same.
Who published this information? Is there an original source? Are other reliable news organisations reporting the same thing? Has a recognised fact-checking organisation examined it?
Do not rely only on the number of forwards, likes or comments. Popularity is not proof.
And remember that AI tools can also produce confident, polished answers that are wrong. As I wrote in What Is a Thinking Machine?, a fluent answer is not the same as a correct one.
Kindness is part of safety
Not all online harm comes from strangers.
Sometimes, it comes from classmates.
A cruel comment. A photograph shared to make someone look foolish. A group deliberately leaving one student out. A joke that keeps getting repeated even after the person it targets has asked everyone to stop.
These things can hurt deeply, partly because they do not end when the school day is over. They follow students home through their phones.
If you see someone being bullied online, you do not have to fight the bully or put yourself in danger.
But you can refuse to join in. You can avoid forwarding the content. You can send the person a kind message. If it is appropriate and safe, you can save evidence and tell a teacher or trusted adult.
And if this is happening to you, please do not carry it alone.
Talk to someone you trust. Asking for help is not weakness. You deserve to feel safe, both online and offline.
Balance, not fear
None of this means that a phone is dangerous in itself.
A screen can help a student understand a difficult topic, speak to a grandparent living far away, learn a language, create music, build a project or find people who share an interest.
There is a lot of good in technology. We should not lose sight of that.
The aim is to make room for other parts of life too.
Have some meals without phones. Spend time talking to people without looking at a screen. Go outside. Read a book. Build something with your hands. Allow yourself to be bored once in a while.
You do not have to fill every quiet moment with something to watch.
Sometimes, a little space is all the mind needs to wander, think and come up with an idea of its own.
Healthy screen use is not simply about reducing the number of hours. It is about noticing what you do online, how it affects you and whether it is helping you live the life you want.
A word to parents and teachers
Young people notice what adults do much more than we sometimes realise.
If we ask students to put their phones away during dinner, it helps if we do the same. If we warn them about forwarding false messages, they should see us checking before we share.
Rules have their place. But conversations matter just as much.
Ask young people what they enjoy online. What makes them uncomfortable? Have they ever seen something that they did not know how to handle? What would they do if someone threatened them?
And listen to the answers without immediately turning the conversation into a lecture.
A child who feels safe talking to an adult is more likely to ask for help when something goes wrong. If every mistake leads to punishment or the immediate loss of a phone, a young person may choose to stay silent when they most need support.
Our goal should be to help them develop judgement, not just obedience.
Try this
For three days, keep a small screen diary.
You do not need an elaborate chart. Each time you pick up your phone, make a short note of three things:
- What time was it?
- Why did I pick it up?
- How did I feel when I put it down: better, the same or worse?
At the end of three days, read through your notes.
Look for patterns.
Which uses left you feeling better? Which left you feeling tired or distracted? Which were necessary? Which happened simply out of habit?
Then choose one small change to try for a week. Only one.
Perhaps you will switch off a few notifications. Perhaps you will leave your phone outside the bedroom at night. Or perhaps you will stop opening one particular app whenever you have a spare minute.
Do not try to change everything at once. Start with something you can actually continue.
In my first essay, Bring a Rough Idea, I asked you to bring a rough idea.
This time, bring your screen diary.
It is a small step towards making sure that you are the one in charge.