Phone Addiction≋ Food Addiction
The body positivity movement, originally meant to support differently-bodied people, like those with physical disabilities or difference, was co-opted by the pro-fat body movement. Across social media hundreds of content creators proudly display their junk food meals and the unhealthy bodies that food produces.
It’s easy to see why someone would prefer to love themselves in obesity than go through the difficult process of changing their diet. Late-stage capitalist America produces more empty and unhealthy calorie foods than it does healthy ones. Many processed American foods are not legal to sell in other countries because they literally lack any nutritional value (AP 2022). Access to healthier foods is very difficult with many Americans live in food deserts; areas without supermarkets or grocery stores that carry fresh fruits, vegetables, and other basic nutritional needs. Then there’s the time involved in planning, buying, preparing, and eventual clean-up in making a meal for oneself or a family.
Unregulated smart phone use is similar, but for a parent or guardian, it should be easier to control. Students are filling their phones with junk. Instead of being tools to keep our students safe, they are being misused with unhealthy apps and behaviors. Students are downloading the digital equivalent of junk food into their brains daily. TikTok, SnapChat, Twitch, and Kick are just a few of the social media platforms that can and have featured both obscene materials.
From a non-parent, teacher’s perspective, the solution is easy and obvious. Lock up that phone! Before giving your student a smart phone, use all of the controls to make sure that your student can use the phone to make calls, stay satellite-located, text friends, and listen to music. That’s it. Take away all of the junk-foodesque features that lead to device addiction. Make sure they can utilize safety features and utilities like the calculator, and lock them away from everything else.
You say your student already has a bad phone addiction? Time to put them on a diet. As a parent, you own the phone and pay for the service; you can control how your student accesses that technology. Is it easy? Not at all. There’s a reason body positivity morphed into an obesity-is-great movement; diets and habit changes are difficult.
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