The Art of Procrastination: A Teenage Epidemic

Stop procrastinating. The usual phrase that most teenagers around the world hear from their parents and family. But what exactly is procrastination and when did it become such a widespread epidemic?

Generation Z, the current generation of teenagers, was brought up with technology. These teens  were raised in an era where nothing was truly certain: technology was constantly changing and media platforms started to take over. The world was taking off in social innovations and inventions. The turn of the 21st century allowed for parents to raise children with amenities and objects that were created for the need of comfort and ease, not survival or pure necessity.

So instead of reaching for our backpacks to pull out homework for school, many of my peers — myself included — reach for our phones and laptops to entertain ourselves with Hulu, Instagram, or Youtube. These distractions have caused   the importance of learning to be pushed aside and left for another day. But, procrastination is not a modern phenomenon. In fact, procrastination was also an ancient issue. Ever since people started assigning tasks to others, procrastination became a trend.

Nevertheless, scientists and researchers have good reasons to publish articles and books filled with theories on why teenagers procrastinate. It seems that as modern society advances rapidly into the era of amazingly distracting technology, more and more high schoolers will be inevitably be swayed by the appeals of watching TV on our cellular devices or scrolling through their Instagram and Snapchat feed.

In conclusion, procrastination can not be blamed solely on teenagers as it really is a phenomenon that had been occurring since the time of ancient Rome. The Internet and other technological innovations of the modern age also cannot be blamed entirely as the cause. It is evident that the internet just hasn’t aided in blocking our natural instinct to give in and push off tasks.