Mental Health – AHS NEWSPAPER

SCROLL: Day in the Life of a High Schooler

March 17, 2025

Anya Gorovits and Diya Manikandan || STAFF WRITERS

I jolt out of sleep as my alarm blares into my ears. My hand moves before my brain does, reaching for my phone. I quickly snooze the alarm and instinctively click to watch some videos—just a few to start the day.

“STOP SCROLLING, If you want to be more productive, you need a morning routine.”

I blink at the screen. That sounds…important. I watch as a girl lists out five steps to increase productivity. I instantly forget steps one through four, but I think step five is “stop wasting time.”

I nod. Good advice. I watch another video. Then another; 20 minutes later, I’m still in bed.

Scroll.

History, first period. The teacher is lecturing us about the Constitution, but it sounds fake. I open my phone under my desk.

“Is the Constitution even real?”

First result, a guy’s voice blares through my AirPods: “WAKE UP PEOPLE, the government doesn’t want you to know this, but the Constitution was actually written by time travelers!”

I look up to see everyone staring at me. Shoot, my AirPods never connected. The teacher sighs and continues on with the lesson. I look back at my phone.

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Math class. I don’t understand anything. The room is silent, except for the teacher’s monotone voice and the sound of someone cracking their knuckles. What if she calls on me?

I ask to go to the bathroom and leave. In line, I open my phone.

I return to class 12 minutes later. The teacher glances over at me from her desk.

“You okay?” she asks. I nod and slide into my seat.

Scroll.

Time for lunch. I sit with my friends. We smile at each other and pull out our phones. Overlapping sounds from our phones accompany the background noise of the cafeteria.

Someone finally looks up. “Did you see that—”

“Yeah, I saw it on TikTok,” I say. They nod and go back to scrolling. I take a bite of my wrap.

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Gym class. The teacher says we need to exercise.

I check my phone. One video says walking 100 steps a day is enough. The next says running can be bad for you.

I decide to sit down.

Scroll.

Finally, I’m home. I open up a blank doc. My English essay on phone usage is due tomorrow. Time to focus. I set my phone on the other side of my desk.

I type my first two sentences, occasionally glancing over at the chipped screen that stares back at me, daring me to pick it up. I begin to write, “Phone addiction is a myth. I would be able to survive without my phone–”

BZZZ. BZZZ.

Ignore it. I need to focus. I write another sentence, but the words just don’t sound right, even though they came from a video by a wellness influencer. Somehow, everything sounds better when it’s online.

I’m about to finish the end of my next sentence—

BZZZ. BZZZ. BZZZ.

Maybe it’s something important. It couldn’t hurt to check.

My phone screen lights up. Oh, someone new requested to follow me. I should see who they are, check out their posts, where they go to school—

Scroll.

Four hours later, the three sentences from my essay stand alone. Meanwhile, I’ve watched 73 videos. A few of them were on tips for better writing though, so it’s basically studying.

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My eyes drag lazily across the screen of my phone to check the time. Midnight. I should sleep.

Another video will help me fall asleep. Just one more.

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It’s 3:00 AM, and my phone is snug against the indentation it’s made on my pinky finger.

A pop-up interrupts the dancing cat on my screen…

“Time to take a break? You’ve been scrolling for a while!”

Sigh…

Scroll.

Articles

Zzzzzzz The All Nighter Epidemic zzzzzzZ

March 17, 2025

Importance of Prioritizing Sleep & Effects of Sleep Deprivation

Samantha Sun || SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR

The exhausting Monday morning starts with eye bags and eight ounces of coffee. Despite the waft of caffeine filling the air, everyone seems to be as awake as zombies. Walking through the halls at eight in the morning, murmuring about pulling all-nighters or late-night study sessions fill the air. First period is a chorus of yawns, and somewhere, someone is already dozing off at their desk. Rather than eight ounces of coffee, it’s eight hours of sleep that AHS students need.

Every AHS student has been there—whether it’s staying up late to finish a project after procrastinating for the past week, studying for a test last minute because it was pushed back to prioritize the other homework, or doom scrolling through social media until the sun rises.

Junior Meredith Cummings admitted to getting an average of four to six hours of sleep during school nights. “I think I got five hours of sleep today, or yesterday, or whatever. I don’t know anymore. The days are blurry,” she said with a shake of her head.

On Mondays, she has Orchestra and doesn’t get home until 8:15 p.m. Usually on Mondays, teachers will assign a bunch of work because it’s a new week, Cummings noted. “It’s too much,” she said. Sometimes it’s not just staying awake in class but being able to be alert to do even the simplest tasks. “[Once] I was so tired…I left my glasses in the fridge,” Cummings said, reminiscing and laughing about the memory.

“For me, when I wake up I’m awake but one to two hours later my brain just goes completely blank and it’s really hard for me to focus on my work and to understand topics,” senior Sana Godhani said, who is currently researching sleep deprivation for her Capstone project.

But what does sleep do? The simple answer is that it keeps us alert and ready for the day. “I think about it like filling your gas tank,” said health teacher Bestey Desfosse. Cells and muscles are repairing, rebuilding, and regenerating while resting. Sleep refreshes energy and ensures that students are equipped to deal with all the mental or emotional challenges in life, Desfosse said.

Beyond drowsiness, sleep deprivation can lead to higher chances of getting sick, more emotional reactions, or increased procrastination. In fact, many issues that students face during the day are rooted in the fact that they aren’t getting enough rest at night, Desfosse explained.

But why don’t students get enough sleep? Stress. According to the Cleveland Clinic, stress throws off the melatonin balance and the amount of Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the body’s system decreases, making it harder to fall asleep. GABA is a neurotransmitter in the brain that regulates mood, relaxation, and sleep. However, when it’s not balanced, it causes a cycle where stress leads to poor sleep, and poor sleep increases stress. “It’s like a spiral,” Cummings said.

“There’s also things that you can do during the day to help boost your system like going outside…[or] working in a space where natural light is able to come in,” advised Godhani.

Simple things like taking a walk, purposefully getting eight to ten hours of sleep, or meditating can help balance GABA levels and help with relieving stress. “Talking and, like, letting it out [helps],” Cummings said. For her, chatting with friends and family helped make the burden of stress lighter.

However, after a long day of school, clubs, and other commitments, the easiest thing to do is unwind and check social media. But one hour of relaxing can turn into the infamous monster of doom scrolling. “Teenagers’ brains that aren’t fully developed are prone to getting sucked in,” said Desfosse.

The blue light from phones tricks the brain into wakefulness, making it more difficult to fall asleep at night. “If you use blue light glasses [or] change the color on your phone to red, it could help decrease those effects,” Godhani advised. While it’s okay to use social media as a tool to relieve stress, it shouldn’t become an obstacle that prevents sleep.

Sleep deprivation isn’t normal—it’s an issue with real consequences. Sleep is not a luxury, it is a necessity. At the end of the day, the best way to stay awake isn’t a cup of coffee, it’s a good night’s sleep.

Articles Events

“I Am More” Art Exhibit Brings Mental Health Awareness to AHS

May 6, 2024

By Tommy Kruecker-Green
STAFF WRITER

The “I Am More” exhibit was hosted in Andover High School library this past month. AHS Health teacher Holly Breen arranged to have artist Amy Kerr’s work displayed as an opportunity to raise mental health awareness among students in an impactful way.

Kerr’s awareness that she was “more” than her mental health struggles led her to embark on a creative project and artistic mission that would help others as well as herself. She would hear people’s stories of challenges they faced and then draw their portraits in places of their choosing that reflected their interests and values, or their “happy places”. The resulting pastel and colored-pencil portraits along with the sitters’ stories have been displayed in a number of venues across New England, including hospitals, schools, malls, government buildings, and libraries.

STAFF PHOTO / Minati Thota
Senior Harini Iyer looking at “I Am More” art exhibit.

Breen learned about the exhibit through The NAN Project, a group that speaks to the school’s junior health classes about mental health and supporting friends in need, and arranged to have it be exhibited at AHS. The exhibit creates an opportunity to promote conversations about difficult topics like mental health, disabilities, and addiction.

“I think it is important to help students learn in different ways. This learning experience helps students gain empathy for those who are living with different challenges,” said Breen.

To that end, Breen made sure that AHS health classes visited the exhibit in the library. Students were asked to write about which portraits they found most impactful. Other classes also went to view the exhibit and discussed what they saw. For many, it did what it was designed to do. It provided an opportunity to initiate dialogue about the complex realities of mental health challenges.

It might seem self-evident that we are more than the sum of our parts, and certainly much more than the challenges that we face. Yet, for many people facing mental health challenges, perspective is missing. Their fundamental being and intrinsic nature is overshadowed by the challenges they face. Amy Kerr’s brainchild, “I Am More,” brings that to the fore.