Jaden's Blog

  🧠 I Tracked My Screen Time for Three Days — and Honestly, I’m Embarrassed By: Jaden Dazevedo When I Realized My Phone Might Actually Own Me When my professor told us to track our phone usage for three days, I kind of laughed. I didn’t think it would be that bad. I figured I was on my phone a few hours a day — texting, checking socials, maybe watching a few YouTube videos before bed. How bad could it really be? Well… it was bad. After downloading the YourHour app and letting it track my activity for 72 hours, I realized I spend around six and a half hours a day on my phone. Six hours! That’s basically a part-time job — except instead of earning money, I’m just losing brain cells scrolling through TikTok. Even worse, the app told me I picked up my phone more than 140 times a day. That’s like every ten minutes. No wonder I can’t focus on homework. The “Addicted to Distraction” Wake-Up Call After reading Tony Schwartz’s “Addicted to Distraction,” everything started to...

  The 13th: A Mirror We Can’t Ignore First Impressions When I first sat down to watch Ava DuVernay’s 13th , I thought I had a decent grasp of how race and incarceration overlap in America. I knew about mass incarceration, the “War on Drugs,” and a few court cases. But honestly, I underestimated just how deeply the system is designed to keep people—especially Black men—trapped. By the end, I felt this weird mix of emotions: frustrated, inspired, and even guilty for how little I’d really thought about these connections before. The Loophole in the 13th Amendment The documentary hits you fast with its central claim: the 13th Amendment, which supposedly ended slavery, left a loophole—slavery is illegal “ except as punishment for a crime .” That one word, except , has shaped everything that came after. It opened the door for politicians, corporations, and law enforcement to reinvent slavery in a new form: mass incarceration. Politics, Policies, and Rhetoric What struck me most ...