With Vine, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Ask.fm, Buzzfeed, Keek, Viddy, and your regular emails and text messages, it is getting harder and harder to keep up with social media.  Teenagers these days have enough to balance with school and sports, but add their phones into the mix and they hardly have time to breathe.

I myself admit that I spend way too much time on my phone; I’m usually on Twitter or Instagram. For me, those two are my favorite applications (apps). Other people may have four or five apps that they love and check constantly.

It’s hard to keep up with everything because social media moves so fast and content is being posted nonstop all day long. For me, I usually check everything at night before I go to bed, but some people are continuously checking their phones all day, every day.

When I asked students how many hours a day that they are on their phone, collectively it ranged anywhere from 2 – 5 hours.  Considering the fact that half of the day is consumed by school and sleeping, almost half of teens’ spare time is being spent on their phones. When I asked those same students if they think they get caught up in the social networking fad, they all started with an enormous ‘yes.’

Many students are finding that their free time is dwindling, lost to hours in front of their phone screen.  Courtney Schmitt (’14), said, “…It’s also hard, especially when I’m trying to do work.”

Sophomore Juliana Roddy agreed and said. “Yes, it’s very distracting.”

All five students interviewed unanimously agreed that Instagram was their favorite social media feed. Instagram is a constant newsfeed of pictures. Users can post, like, comment, and share on Instagram.

Another favorite was Twitter, the constant flow of short phrases, quotes, jokes, or updates of up to 140 characters. Twitter may move the fastest because it takes a matter of seconds to quickly type something that you want to share and hit “tweet.”

Whatever the case — perhaps you should ask yourself if you’d even be reading this article if it hadn’t been promoted through social media.