Healthy Technology Use For Students

By Christian Maitre

Being a media student in college during the pandemic means I’m spending a lot of time on screens. For all of my assignments, I’m using either my laptop or mobile device, and the constant use of screens can get extremely tiring. I wanted to find out from an education expert the long-term effects of excessive screen-time on students, and things students and educators can do to encourage healthy technology use.

I decided to speak to Jenna Linskens, the head of Learning and Information Technology at Ithaca College. “I was a K-12 teacher and an instructional coach. I worked with teachers in the classroom to look at using different tools, whether it was Chromebook, or smart boards, or robotics to support teaching and learning.”

Jenns Linskens, Director of Learning and IT at

Ithaca College

As a media student, I’m usually on screens all day either for required schoolwork or just for relaxing. All this screen time can get draining and overwhelming. So I asked Linskens if it was even possible to be successful in the media industry without burning out from all the excessive screen time.

Linskens expressed that because of her job she has to be on call essentially 24 hours a day. Linskens reports directly to chief information officer, and needs to be ready to support the campus’ tech needs in short notice. As a result she has to be periodically checking her email and messaging apps throughout the day.

“We need to actually schedule time and say, I'm going to schedule time away from my phone.” Said Linskens that’s one of the best things about the team that. I that I work with on a daily basis is we can like communicate with each other and say, you know, I need to step offline for a little bit. And, and I need to put my phone down. I need to disconnect. Um, and so we, we are able to balance that.

Linskens said having people that can keep you accountable about your tech usage can help you moderate your time so that you spend more of it with family and friends.

Another consequence of excessive screen time is becoming addicted to consuming media and using technology.

“You mentioned the addiction. People are looking for that endorphin hit, right?” Linskens explained. “Whether it's Tik TOK, Instagram, you know, Twitter, Facebook, When people post to that, the more likes they get the higher, the endorphin.”

Linskens said the first step in tackling technology addiction is finding a healthy alternative to your unhealthy tech usage. She explained that if you find an activity gives you that same endorphin hit, you can replace your unhealthy habit with things hiking or spending time with family.

Another issue we discussed was digital distraction. In most of my classes in Park laptop use is generally permitted. Students use their laptops to complete classwork, but often I see students getting distracted and using their class time to complete other with their laptops.

I asked Linskens how she thought educators and students could curb the amounts of digital distraction in classroom, and help keep their class on track. She told me about certain software tools she felt were helpful as a teacher.

“One that I used a lot was called JoinMe. And all the students could join my PowerPoint presentation and so they could follow along right on their screen. I also encourage students to utilize screensharing…”

Linskens explained that JoinMe and screen sharing allows her to see her student’s screen, so she can keep track which students are staying on task.