Cell phone policies vary significantly in different schools. According to K-12 Dive.com 97 percent of most middle school and high school students use their cell phones during school. Teachers are always finding themselves asking students to put their phones away.
“I think they are a huge hindrance to class time. I am taking away instruction and privileges from others when I have to constantly reprimand students for phones. It damages my relationship with them. They also seem to put the students farther behind in their work, and keep them from interacting with others. I do not think they should be allowed in classrooms,” English teacher Emily Humy said.
Studies done with college students show that phones aren’t just being used to do a quick check.
According to an article on verywellfamily.com “college students also are spending more class time than ever using their smartphones and other devices. In fact, the study found that students check their phones and other devices more than 11 times a day on average. It is not just a quick glance to see if someone is trying to reach them. Instead, they are spending up to 20% of their classroom time texting, emailing, surfing the web, checking social media, and even playing games.”
Cell phones are not only a distraction in the classrooms but also a distraction outside of the classroom as well.
“Cell phones are just as addicting as tobacco products. Most students miss what’s actually going on in the present moment because they’re more worried about getting it on video,” science teacher Paul Bell said.
Bell also said that if students wanted to go on their phones during class time then he is not going to be arguing and wasting his time. If the student comes to him and then is worried about an assignment missing or their grade then he’s going to have a conversation with them about their cell phone maybe being the issue for the behavior in class.
“If they are strictly used for music, maybe they help. But typically, the music playing is distracting them from focusing, and the constant need to change a song and then check the notification that popped up is a huge issue,” Humy said.
Results from an anonymous survey of Berlin High School students showed that cell phones cause 40.7 percent of students to get headaches from being on their phone too much.
“Sometimes at night when I’m on my phone I’ll get headaches but I’ll just ignore it, I power through the headache,” senior Ximena Vera said.
Besides physical effects that cell phones cause, research shows that they also affect students’ learning in the classrooms.
According to the verywellfamily.com article, “Students need to recognize that reaching for their smartphone during class will impact their overall learning in the classroom. Teachers don’t want to ban cell phones because it wouldn’t be helpful or realistic with the society we live in today, but also it would single out the students that do all their school work on their cell phones and don’t have a second option.”
