If you walk through the halls of most high schools, seeing students with phones in their hands isn’t a surprise. However, in recent years, schools have implemented stricter phone policies to prevent students from being more engaged with their phones than they are in education or socialization. If students are allowed to have their phones next to them in classes, are schools amplifying their addiction to phones?
School Policy
The school board placed a rule on phones back in 2005. Aaron Strouss, the school board’s president shares what the board hopes for with this policy which, ”will help the students be engaged in what they are doing.” The handbook states that students are not allowed to use their personal communication devices at the start of school and until the end of the school day. This includes cell phones, tablets, smartwatches, and non-school computers. This is in place because it, “encourage the focus and engagement required for a highly functional academic environment,” and “addresses concerns regarding the contributions of cell phones and other personal communication devices to academic fraud (cheating).”
As with other mainstream technology, would it be better to educate, foster, and help build healthy habits rather than fight its presence? Since phones will be around for a long time some teachers are teaching students how to adapt to them and appropriately use phones. In Dr. Weber’s class, she likes to give them time to have their phones out, and she will ask them to look up the statistics on a topic, and then share it with the class. A college professor at Central Michigan University, Dr. Weber shares, “Students are getting the opportunity to use their phones and it is also modeling it… in that way, it is teaching students how to be responsible.” When reading the article from Harvard University, Devices in the Classroom it was advised that faculty, “Share advice about good practices for using digital devices. Guidance about turning off extraneous applications and notifications, and closing the device when an activity is completed, will help students not only in your class, but also in their future work environments” when considering whether to allow or not to allow devices.
Positive effects
The impact of smartphones has allowed us to keep in constant communication, given us the ability to entertain ourselves through music and apps, and provided us with a way to have access to information at our fingertips. A multiple-choice survey about phone usage was sent out to Concord High School students on February 24. In that survey, 75.5% of those who filled out the survey conveyed that music helped block out any distractions around them that kept them from doing their schoolwork. Grand Canyon University wrote an article about Studying With Music: Benefits and Tips. The article gives four great reasons why music helps students with school. One of the topics was drowning out background noise: “Listening to music on your headphones while studying or working on class assignments can be a good solution to the problem. This way, you’ll only have to listen to the sounds that inspire and motivate you, rather than the sound of other people talking, sneezing, or doing any number of activities.” Students can quickly access music and stay focused on their schoolwork.
Freshman Jessica Clouser is a hardworking student who uses her phone to listen to music when she starts to feel overwhelmed and wants to stay focused. Another way it helps her is by not getting into conversations that will distract her. She believes that it can help students with any distractions even chatty friends. She shares a tip with her fellow students about listening to music: “Not to be picky about what you are listening to, just pick a playlist and let it play. She continues, “Try not to touch your phone to change the songs or anything because that can cause a distraction as well.”
Negative effects
Although phones have brought us focus when used properly, phones can have a negative effect on mental health in countless ways. One of the most common ways it harms us is by causing depression and high anxiety. In Dr. Weber’s communications class: happiness and well-being, phone use is one of the topics she teaches her students. She dives into all the research that is on phones causing depression and high anxiety. People can have high anxiety because of the fear of missing out. One way students might be depressed is because they are comparing themselves to others. Another factor she states is, “People become more depressed because they become more isolated when using their phone and they’re not engaging in genuine social interaction with people.” She also explained that people can become reactive when their phones are being taken away from them. She explains how it has a role in mental health: “If you think about dopamine fixes, so your brain chemically is becoming addicted to a phone because when we scroll through social media we are getting a dopamine hit.” She continues, “From an addiction perspective, we expect people to have a negative action from taking away the thing that gives them a dopamine fix.”
Another problem that arises in school is students are easily distracted by apps that are not resources. In the survey, 50.9% are on their phones during class. One of the top reasons that they are on their phones is because are done with school work (69.8%), entertainment (64.5%), and connection with others (34.6%). This distraction can keep students from hearing the teacher’s instructions, stop their social skills from growing, and cause them to lose time in class. Dr. Weber brings up how she hears people say that they can multitask but in reality, the research shows that people can’t multitask: “Your brain can’t process information from the same sensory channel for multiple sources.” The article Devices in the Classroom by Harvard University stated: “However, we all know that digital devices can also be an impediment to education, insofar as they enable students who are prone to distraction to indulge in the illusion that they can multitask at no cost to their learning.”
English teacher Ms.Kelly shares her thoughts on the line between a phone being used appropriately and not: “Phones provide a convenience that we’ve all grown accustomed to, but the distractions they cause outweigh any benefit. If a student needs photos for a project or wants to join a review game, phones are a tool for those moments, but it’s so easy to end up on Snapchat or scrolling through Instagram or checking texts.”
Tips
Dr. Weber shares plenty of tips with her students who might benefit from them: Notice patterns with your phone, ask yourself why you are using the phone that you are, what the triggers are causing you to pick up the phone, what feelings you are feeling when you are using the device when you get on and off. She shares that a lot of people use it as a crutch when they are bored or lonely. So instead of trying to pick up the phone in those moments, you can find other things to do like finishing work from another class, starting up a new hobby, or continuing an old one. She explains that another way is to, “make your phone less appealing. Don’t have a picture of your cute puppy on your home screen because it makes you want to pick it up. Keep it a generic gray background.” Continuing, “Take off the apps that make you feel bad… or put the fun stuff in a folder and keep only the tools out… Turn off notification.”
Conclusion
No matter who we are or what we do, we can always work on reducing our phone usage for the better. Reducing phone usage can better our mental health, improve our socialization, and reduce distractions from learning.
