high school, growing up too fast in the pandemic, and being raised in the technological era

lately ive been looking around and i realized how.. old i am. of course im not old, im 15, i just never wouldve thought id be a junior in high school anytime soon. as we're all too tired of hearing at this point i lost two years of school in the pandemic. i tried looking on the bright side of it, thinking that time in quarantine brought a whole lot of change and i came out of it a different person- but honestly i wouldve changed if i was in school anyways. i wish i could do it all over again so i could have better grades. freshman year was hell. im sure everybody's freshman year is hell but by god mine was bad. im so glad that we're back to a real normal- im so so so grateful that where i live i can finally say we're back to "full normal" and not just "sort of normal". sure i missed a lot of middle/highschool experiences but im back and better than ever i think. of course im still jealous of those who graduated in the years before me and had an untouched high school experience, though. i would kill for that. if you thought that growing up in the age of all the technology we have now was bad before the pandemic then oh my god. youre in for a surprise. i not that i hate it, i think its done a lot of good, made our lives easier in some senses, and even helps me a lot personally (im diabetic, i have a sensor that connects to my phone- how cool!!), but its just so bad for you. like genuinely. growing up with your face in your phone or computer sucks balls for your growth and development as a person. i find myself just staring at my phone waiting for messages to come, or scrolling through pinterest to find something funny to send to somebody. thats not the way i should be communicating and i know that- its just such a hard habit to break. i need to look up at the world around me. who i really feel bad for though are kids younger than me; the ipad generation. all of this bullshit is just one big first world problem tbh and i know that, but the ipad kids are in real danger in my opinion. it cant be good for you to have an ipad stuck in your face from the time before you could even talk or walk. its insane. not only because they can be exposed to horrible things on the internet (even on youtube!!), but it fucks with their development. it fucks with their attention spans and their social skills. sure they can get educational benefits from it, especially during the pandemic, but the negatives outweigh the positives. i feel bad for them. 

sometimes i get jealous of the generations before me who grew up without smartphones. call me a crazy conspiracy theorist but i truly believe smartphones are gonna be the fucking downfall of humanity one day. i hate them; but im addicted to mine. truly and fully addicted. if i dont have something to occupy me that day i go insane because my attention span is so short. i need to be entertained every hour of every day. phones are great for communication and even for music nowadays (shoutout spotify. a real one from day one) and i dont want to downplay that. theyre just so bad for your mental health and sometimes i just want a fucking flip phone. i really wish i could just use one but if you dont have a smartphone in 2022, youd be so isolated its insane. its insane how as a society we're controlled by these things in our pockets and its insane how powerful they are.