As teenagers, we are so prone to procrastination, sleep deprivation, and just overall having a messed-up sleep schedule. For most of us, as soon as the weekend hits, or winter break starts, we fall into this vicious cycle of laying down the whole day, staring at our phones until our screen time reaches its maximum peak… and when night time comes, we run to our rooms, lock ourselves in and we open up Discord, Facetime, Snapchat, or whatever means we can use to communicate with our friends. We go on calls for hours and hours and end it when birds start chirping and sunlight goes through our windows. 

My question is, why do we stay up all night, and risk the multiple sermons that will come out of our parents’ mouths just to go on calls with friends who we probably chat with on an everyday basis? We know that we’re going to wake up late, and we know that our day would probably end up becoming wasted because of the hungover that we get from last night’s calls and sleeping through the entirety of the day. I say we do this because of that short-term gratification that we get from having those calls. Though, is it short-term? 

That excitement we feel when we’re on a call with people who care about us and who understand us. Talking all night long, with hushed whispers from the fear that someone might hear what you’re saying in the next room. Eruption of giggles because of talks of the most recent ‘tea’ being spilt or rages and laughter coming from all-night gaming. These types of joys are the ones we teens remember the most. We end the calls with our friends, we go over everything that was said and go to sleep with satisfaction and happiness upon hearing the voices of our friends and being able to talk to them with no care in the world. We wake up feeling energised because finally, after weeks of learning and using our brains, we get to hit that little pause button and simply forget. 

For some of us, we even do school work on calls, which ends up in us having this sense of peace and comfort because of time being spent with people we know doing the same thing as us, hoping to achieve the same goal as us. 

But late-night calls aren’t always so peaceful and happy. We go on late-night calls with people. After all, that’s the time some of us get where we have total privacy because everyone in the house is sleeping. We stay up all night because we’re not ready for the day to end. We are not prepared for the responsibilities of tomorrow to come. 

In some instances though, teenagers like us go on calls to finally let out everything we’ve been holding on to for the past day, or maybe even a week. We release everything and, just for a moment, just for a few hours out of their day, we’re able to escape reality. We focus on the voices of our friends and let that drown out the worries and anxiety that’s been sitting in our heads for a long time. 

Us going on calls with our friends could also mean that we just desperately miss them, especially with the pandemic that seems to never disappear. These calls could be the only thing that’s helping some of us cope with the lack of face-to-face interaction with our closest friends.

When we wake up the next day, all we can do is lay in our beds again and wait for night to arrive to repeat everything with the same people. Everyone is questioning why we keep sticking our faces into this screen when all it’s doing is ‘damaging’ our brain and making us physically weak. My answer to that is because sticking our faces into the screen is one of the few moments where teenagers like us, can enjoy, let loose, and feel happiness. 

You’re a teenager who has gone on a few calls in your life too. What was your reason for staying up late to have those special night calls with your friends?