It’s no secret that cell phones are taking over the world. Teens and even children spend a lot of time on their phones. Very few of them use their phones to make calls. Most of them use them to play games, text, get on the internet, and access social media apps.
Everyone with a cell phone will probably admit to spending too much time on it.
Most parents have probably fought with their children over their cellphones and even tried to stop them from taking them to school.
Some schools have rules that do not allow students to bring their phones to class. Others allow cell phones, but they don’t allow students to use them unless there is an emergency. It’s easy to see how cell phones can be a distraction in class, but most people aren’t sure how to get students to put them down, so they can learn.
Teacher Michael Lee noticed that his students didn’t want to put down their phones. When they did, they were hurrying through their work, so they could get their phones back out.
He was upset about their obsession and wanted to find a way to make things better.
He said:
“My overall goal was to give kids an opportunity to engage in what they’re doing. And that’s hard to do when every few seconds or a few minutes there’s a beep on your phone and you have to check what it is.”
He decided to create a little cubby and charging station in his classroom.
Each student was assigned a cubby, and they could put their cellphone in it during class and even charge it while they were working. The fact that their phones were safe and charging seemed to let the students worry less about them.
He noticed that they were more focused and less worried about checking their phones.
When other teachers saw how well his idea was working, they decided to do something similar. Before long, his idea spread to other schools. Now, many teachers are finding ways to motivate their students to put down their phones in class and pay attention to their work.
Many students are so crazy over their phones that they are considered addicted to them.
Cellphone addiction is a real thing, and it’s just as serious as many other types of addiction. While it may not cause any physical harm to the addict, the mental and emotional harm it can cause can be devastating. There have been many studies on phone addiction, including one from the National Library of Medicine. The results of this study say:
“A primary objective of the present study was to investigate which of the 24 identified cell-phone activities were associated significantly with cell-phone addiction. We initially investigated if there is any difference across male and female cell-phone users in terms of the cell-phone activities used. … For the total sample, respondents reported spending the most time texting (94.6 minutes per day), sending e-mails (48.5 minutes), checking Facebook (38.6 minutes), surfing the Internet (34.4 minutes), and listening to their iPods (26.9 minutes). Additionally, the T-tests and the Cohen’s d overall results on time spent showed eleven of the 24 activities differed significantly across the sexes. Across all of the 24 cell-phone activities, females reported spending significantly more (p < .02) time on their phones per day (600 minutes) than males (458.5 minutes).”
Those are some alarming statistics — students are spending a lot of time on their cell phones.
While it’s not likely that any of these students will be willing to put down their phones for good, thanks to teachers like Lee, some of them are spending less time on them — at least while they are in school.
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