By Katie Vasquez
With almost everyone owning a cell phone, it’s everywhere.
Social media is part of a daily routine for many adolescents including this group of Chaminade high school students.
“I just wake up and immediately I go to my phone, just start scrolling. like, don’t even think about anything. just go straight to my phone,” said 9th grader at Chaminade High School, Ty Miranda.
These freshmen decided to see if they could change that, creating an app called “Media Mindful.”
“Everyone knows how to use technology mostly now. it’s become part of everyone’s day,” said 9th grader at Chaminade High School, Luke Krinsky.
First they conducted a survey of 324 students at the Long Island school.
“It told us that many kids spend, like, shocking amounts of, like, time on social media every day,” said Andrew Runje Dargento, a 9th grader at Chaminade High School.
The results showed 96 percent use apps for more than an hour every day and 60 percent found it to negatively impact their lives. The app reminds users of screen time usage, offers rewards for cutting down on time and has an artificial intelligence bot to help with negative feelings.
“The AI recognizes key words from your input and it makes a personalized response to you. So for example, if I say social media has given me anxiety, it recognizes the keyword, anxiety and it makes a response for that word,” said Mateo Solis, a 9th grader at Chaminade High School.
The team presented their idea to the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research and career services annual STEM competition and beat out 32 other schools for the top prize which was $1,800. They hope to use part of it to complete their project.
“I would like to finish the app, make it working and available for everybody to help everyone,” said Christopher Covelli, a 9th grader at Chaminade High School.
Because they have experienced the app’s effects firsthand.
“It’s really just been like eye opening for us because we’ve gotten to like, you know, like solve an issue that we’ve all felt really personally,” said Dargento.
“After, like, cutting down these distractions, I was able to focus my time more on, like, what I really wanted to do. So as a result, my relationships with my family improved. I could get closer to God because now I have all this extra time,” said Solis.