Cell Phones in the Classroom

 

Social media has grown to become one of the most prevalent things in modern day society. Becoming known by every generation. The question is are they causing destruction to our schools and society. I have started to notice how social media can be harmful to individuals, as I have started to take note of how I can scroll for hours on end. This is not a good thing as it can get in the way of tasks I need to complete. 

Personally I do not believe young people should be on social media. I think it causes the attention span of young people to diminish as they constantly want to move on to the next video. Tik tok has created a system where you can watch 100’s of videos in an extremely short amount of time. This is hurting the school system as I believe students will eventually not be able to sit and take an exam for an extended period of time. This lack of attention to the topic at hand could possibly contribute to unmotivated students that will lead to unmotivated workers, causing somewhat of a dark age part 2 in society where little scientific discoveries are being made. This scares me because I have all these plans in life and with social media outlets such as TikTok existing I think if I am not careful I will find myself unmotivated to achieve what I want to achieve. 

There are also references to social media and smartphones worsening mental health among the youth. “One hypothesis that has gotten a lot of traction is that with nearly every teen using a smartphone these days, digital media must take some of the blame for worsening mental health. “But some researchers argue that this theory isn't well supported by existing evidence and that it repeats a "moral panic" argument made many times in the past about video games, rap lyrics, television and even radio, back in its early days.” (Kamenetz 2019). This is scary news and while I never believed video games were bad for a adolescents mind I was an individual who was easily able to put down the controller. On the other hand as I previously stated, I can catch myself scrolling mindlessly through tiktok for hours. This is something that would never happen to me while playing video games. On Tik Tok I also notice that my mood definitely changes based on whatever videos are showing up on my feed. I am 20 years old and can see how social media is changing aspects of my life. It scares me what could happen to children who are getting hooked at a young age such as 5-15 years old. At this age your mind is still developing and should not be affected by information you are consuming online. I see in public children who are no older than 7 years old with IPads; they have their faces practically glued to the screen. I didn't get any device like that until I was in 8th grade, and it was just a cell phone that I could only make calls on so my mom could check up on me while I was out with my friends. Kids nowadays aren’t going outside and playing sports like they used to. I believe my generation is going to be the last generation that actually wanted to go to the park and enjoy fresh air rather than sit inside on social media. 

When watching the documentary on Netflix “The Social Dilemma”, it brought up the topic of how social media companies are making your feed tailored to your interests. These companies are constantly collecting information from you that will make the app more enjoyable for the user. For example Tik Tok will see that you liked 3 videos about a specific sport, and will fill your entire feed with videos about that sport, without you needing to follow any accounts. This is extremely scary, as this is the reason why individuals catch themselves scrolling for hours. Everything they watch they enjoy. Put into the hands of a child who has no responsibilities to attend to they can possibly sit the entire day on the app being filled with entertainment the entire time. Instilling a lazy mindset. Also furthering the lack of exercise and the obesity crisis in this country. Tailoring the app to the individual is scary also from a political standpoint because you will never hear news from both sides of the spectrum, leading to a closed mind and not making your own decisions on the topic. Practically being a sheep. This is something we do not want younger generations falling victim to, debates are important as they let everyone get their point across and possibly allow one individual to hear a point of view they didn’t think about.

“A total ban “sounds great, I just don’t think it’s realistic. I don’t like to have unenforceable policies,” Jones said.” (Klein 2019). This line brings up a valuable point that it may be completely impossible for no phones allowed at school. While this may be the case I think no phones during class should be enforced, by any means necessary. I like the idea of a basket where you can place every student's phone in before class to ensure they do not have it during lecture. “The human brain is incapable of thinking more than one thing at a time,” he said. “And so what we think of as multitasking is actually rapid-switch-tasking. And the problem with that is that switch-tasking may cover a lot of ground in terms of different subjects, but it doesn’t go deeply into any of them.” (Lamb 2023). This is important to take into consideration because it shows that the student having access to the phone will only pose a distraction to the lesson plan. No access to the phone will eliminate the distraction. So based on all of this I believe I made my stance quite clear and think phones and social media are a serious problem that will ruin the education system.

References

Jeff Orlowski. (2020). The Social Dilemma [Documentary]. In Netflix.

Kamenetz, A. (2019, August 27). NPR's The Scientific Debate over Teens, Screens, and Mental Health. National Public Radio. Link

Klein, A. (2019, September 6). Schools say no to cell phones. But is it a smart move? Education Week. Link

Writer, A. L. H. S. (2023, March 13). Experts see pros and cons to allowing cellphones in class. Harvard Gazette. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/03/experts-see-pros-and-cons-to-allowing-cellphones-in-class/