Project To Improve My School or Community. by Christopher

Project To Improve My School or Community. by Christopher - June 2026 Scholarship Essay

I think one of the biggest problems for schools and communities currently is the attention span of young people and the lack of focus on subjects and on complicated subjects that take time to learn. We are on our phones a lot, and the use of social media has made us more impatient, hindering our ability to stay focused in school. I have seen this throughout my time in school. I have also felt this problem, as my attention span was running thin, and I realized I needed to improve my patience. So I've reduced my time on social media, started to read books, and now I feel more patient and motivated to learn about certain topics, even complex and difficult problems. But not everybody has this opportunity, or realization.

Which leads me to believe that if I could design a project to improve my school or community, it would focus on the value of staying focused and being present. I would try to find strategies to have people be less on their phones. I think the biggest challenge for my generation, and the future ones, is the attention span and the influence of social media, as it is taking away our patience, and studies have shown a significant negative relationship between social media addiction and mindful attention, suggesting that heavier social media use is associated with poorer sustained attention (Hussain). Losing an attention span results in less patience to read books, carefully analyze information, stay focused to solve a problem, and not give up. The project would also focus on what types of things would be needed to be implemented in the classroom and community programs to help solve this problem or greatly reduce it.

Overall, this project would have to be a long-term project, as solving this complex issue affects everybody every day, and telling somebody to stop using their phone doesn’t necessarily solve the issue. But trying to find smart alternative solutions and experimenting with possible solutions will help take the right steps to solve this issue, and will greatly help people focus. Which overall would lead to more productivity in whatever interests and passions they have.

Source:
Hussain, Muhammad, et al. “(PDF) Effect of Social Media Addiction on Attention Span and Aggression among University Students.” Research Gate, Apr. 2024, www.researchgate.net/publication/381403305_Effect_of_Social_Media_Addiction_on_Attention_Span_and_Aggression_among_University_Students.