“How am I supposed to get good grades if I’m so tempted to procrastinate after school?” Most weekdays when I get home, I’ll feel so burnt out and exhausted after hours in school that I’ll feel no energy to reopen my backpack and sit down for yet more work. 

Does the story seem familiar?

As a student, procrastination is scrolling through TikTok because homework is the last thing students want to do. Procrastinating is thinking, I’ll just do it in a little bit and instead doing anything and everything but assignments. There seem to be students who are great at keeping themselves on task but there are so many others who procrastinate as a constant part of their life. 

And despite how much procrastinators hate the fact that they procrastinate, they still manage to do it again. 

In one scholarly study it was found that internet procrastination is directly correlated to defects in cognitive control, worsening academic performance, drops in emotional well-being, and consequences for social functioning.

NVD sophomore Dalia Sasmaz explained, “Procrastination affects me by just getting in the way of me achieving what I want to achieve and it just serves as such an obstacle. It negatively affects my mood as well.”

Procrastination does generally start as a result of fatigue, lack of motivation, and impulsivity. With the internet as such a huge part of everyday life, procrastination comes in the form of internet distraction for this generation especially. 

“Usually if my phone is next to me, which is definitely the biggest distraction of all, I’ll start to scroll on social media or I might call someone and start talking about something off-topic that has nothing to do with school,” Issy Graber, another sophomore said. 

Social media is purposely designed to draw attention and keep engagement so by scrolling through TikTok or an Instagram feed students are distracting themselves with a tool that is going to keep them away from their work for a ton of time.

“I do get frustrated because I know I have it in me to be able to do my work but it’s frustrating to know that it’s only a few simple tasks in front of me and it’s the little distractions around me that hold me back from doing those simple tasks,” Graber said as well. 

Out of five NVD students polled, four of them reported that they procrastinate up to four days of the school week on homework. So, how do students resist the pull of procrastination? How do they tackle tasks without leaving them for the last minute?

It’s evident that once in a while every student will find themselves procrastinating, but the key may be to pinpoint what the driving force is that keeps someone from building up a routine that would keep up productivity.

The worst part of being a procrastinator is letting it affect not just small tasks like schoolwork but also life choices.

“I procrastinate with a lot more than just school and I feel like procrastinating with things that don’t have deadlines is awful. I’ll want to try out a hobby or go somewhere I won’t get around to it” Sasmaz said.  

Setting a time limit on apps such as Tik Tok or making sure to do work between certain time periods can help battle the pull to procrastinate and its effect. 

“I don’t know if your brain just kind of tricks you but you just get lazy, or I just get lazy,” Graber said.