Procrastination is a “fun in the moment” activity that just about everyone has been involved in, at one time or another (or all the time). When you have something to do, especially when you’d rather be doing anything else than that, you might end up putting it off till the last minute – or not even doing it at all. Our generation is as tech engrossed as ever, and it’s making things easier to do than before. But is this making us lazier, therefore causing us to procrastinate more?

Most of our generation has technology available at our fingertips with the click of a button or a few taps on a glass screen. Without even thinking about it, we can start playing our favorite game within seconds or send a short text in the blink of an eye. We can also use the calculator app to help with math homework or Google something for a research project in ELA, but switching from doing homework to playing games is far too easy for us not to notice. When you’re bored of working on math homework and you say that it “won’t even help me in life,” you’ve already taken the wrong step. Saying that you’re putting time and effort into what is not worth it is the equivalent of saying that what you’re doing is absolutely meaningless, which leads to you thinking that you should be doing something more interesting. You already have your phone in your hand, and answering that text from your best friend is a swipe and a few taps away! It turns out that 17 out of 20 students at Canyon Vista have said that they have been sidetracked while using their device for homework in that exact same way. “Kids are always on their phones, and in addition to not being aware of your surroundings when you’re texting, it also definitely makes us put off things like homework longer than we should,” says Sophia Davis, a 7th grader.

According to Isabelle Abbey-Vital, “Procrastination on a neurobiological level actually appears to be emotionally driven, stemming from an internal desire to protect ourselves from negative feelings associated with the fear of failure.” This means that you want to shield yourself from getting frustrated from your homework, which is why you might choose to do something else to distract yourself. A simple thing you could tell yourself is that it will only get worse if you don’t try, and if you decide that watching a TV show in between each math problem is the right way to go, at the very least make it equal; 20 minutes of homework, then 20 minutes of TV. If you know you cannot stick to that even if it meant saving the world, you should try an “afternoon schedule.” It can be as simple as doing your math homework first, then eating a snack, working on science, then checking your Instagram feed, and so on until you complete everything you need to do. Then you can pat yourself on the back and RELAX – you’ve earned it!