Author: Ashley Zhou (she/her) & Darrel Zhao (he/him)
What is the inspiration behind your project?: The inspiration behind our project was our personal experiences with technology. We have seen the detrimental impacts that screen addiction has had on teens, including us. Thus, we made it our goal to convey the fact that unhealthy amounts of technology usage can be damaging to real-world relationships and experiences. Furthermore, we wanted to make the video visually appealing and engaging to watch to strengthen our message. We decided to create a split-screen video in which we compared a teen with a phone addiction to one without one. All in all, we felt inspired to make a video that would effectively communicate our message and reach our target audience.
Reflect on what you hope to communicate through your project: Through our project, we want to show that teens miss out on real life due to screen addiction. By portraying one of the teens influencing the other to stop using their phone, we hope to encourage teens to help their friends combat unhealthy relationships with devices. We also included this turning point in the video to show that changing one’s relationship with technology is possible even when it feels like it is not.
How do you hope your project will make an impact for yourself and/or others? : We hope that our project will show our peers the difference between effective screen use and unhealthy addiction. Through our video, we hope to encourage other teens to reflect on their relationships with their devices and realize just how important healthy ones are. With the scenes portrayed in the film, we hope that viewers will become more self-aware of their current habits.