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A spirit that is not afraid

Miss Auburn University promotes less screen time

"My hope is that people will really start thinking about how much time they are really on their phones. I also hope that they will realize that the quality of life without always being on a phone is just so much greater and richer."

<p>Miss Auburn University Lauren Bradford promotes less screen time.&nbsp;</p>

Miss Auburn University Lauren Bradford promotes less screen time. 

When walking around campus, one is bound to see multiple students looking down at their phones while walking to class. It seems as if ever since the iPhone came out in 2007, people have been glued to their phones. It has become such a noticeable issue that Apple installed an application into their phones to show users their screen times. 

Miss Auburn University Lauren Bradford hopes to help with this increasing problem through her platform, The Digital Diet Plan. 

“So this platform is about how to find and maintain digital balance," she said. "I think it is truly an epidemic that in our world and in our culture that it is just so typical to have your phone on you and be looking at it all the time.”

Throughout this week, Bradford has been on Auburn’s concourse, promoting Unplug with Miss AU as a way to spread her platform to the student body. Through conversations with students on the concourse, Bradford learned that the average screen time is six hours per day. 

“The purpose of this week is to really have people think about how much they are on their phone and how it has probably affected relationships, distracting them," Bradford said. "It’s overall a burden to be on your phone that much, and I just want to bring awareness to that problem.” 

Each day of the week has a specific theme: Monday was Digital Detox, Tuesday was Trash Stress, Wednesday was In Charge of Time, Thursday is Face to Face Connection and Friday will be Connection. 

For Thursday, Bradford and her team are making Valentines Day cards and will talk to students on how to deeply connect with people and how important it is to have face-to-face connection, rather than a connection through a screen. 

On Friday, Bradford will be passing out conversation starter buttons for students to put on their backpacks.



“I know that when we stand in line, we just get on our phones," she said. "But imagine a world where we just talk to the person next to us instead of being on our phones. That person next to you in line could be your life-long friend, but you just would have never known while on your phone.”

Bradford has been promoting her platform for many years and has spoken about it to multiple high schools. She added that she has spoken to over 3,000 high schoolers about it already.

“I have been so lucky and so blessed to get to go to so many schools and teacher events," she said. "I’m looking forward to talking to two more schools about my platform in the next few weeks.” 

Bradford never had a phone until she was in high school, and she thinks it gave her an opportunity to look at how phone usage affected her friends and others around her. 

“I’m very much a people person, and I love interacting with people and meeting new people," Bradford said. "It just breaks my heart to see people on their phones at places like restaurants with family, friends or couples on a date. It breaks my heart to see those relationships and the quality of them being so degraded by screen time.”

Miss Auburn University hopes that she can reach out to as many students at Auburn University as she can. 

She added that students should come to the concourse to check out her platform this week to do something fun while learning something valuable about the effects of excessive screen time.

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“My hope is that people will really start thinking about how much time they are really on their phones" Bradford said. "I also hope that they will realize that the quality of life without always being on a phone is just so much greater and richer. I want people to realize that our relationships deserve more than to be invaded with screen time. We all deserve more than that. It's an added stressor and a time waster. We all deserve the mental space to dream our dreams and do the things we want to do without being weighed down by the huge amount of time we spend on technology.” 


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