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Smartphones have become an integral part of everyday life; they are found while driving, eating and now, in the classrooms. As technology becomes more central to daily life, students increasingly bring their phones to school and use them throughout the day. Phones can be considered helpful educational tools, offering access to research or learning apps. However, phones are often a distraction rather than a productivity tool in academic settings. Today, smartphones are an evident disruption to learning and student focus, where their presence in the classroom does more harm than good.
One of the most pressing concerns with phone use in school is the impact on attention. The design of smartphones is to pull users in constantly, whether that be with alerts, vibrations or endless streams of content. Although this idea may be acceptable during breaks, this has proved to be detrimental during class time. Students will be constantly tempted to check messages, scroll through social media or open games. Even these few seconds of distraction can cause students to miss key instructions or lose focus for the rest of the class. This multitasking only feels productive even if the phones are used for calculators or other apps. Studies have shown that switching between tasks reduces memory and weakens understanding. As a result, teachers are forced to compete with the phones for the students’ attention.
In addition to the decreased focus on academics, phones can potentially create behavior problems and weaken class environments. Teachers will likely spend more valuable classroom time enforcing phone rules and managing off-task behavior. This discipline takes away from actual instructional time. More importantly, this constant device use reduces face-to-face interaction between students. Instead of talking during class or connecting at lunch, students often hide behind their phones. As a result, social growth is limited, feelings of isolation increase and classroom collaboration decreases.
Some argue that phones are valuable educational tools. They provide access to calculators, research websites and apps that support learning. Sometimes, they offer accommodations for students with learning disabilities, including text-to-speech features. If actions were to be taken to remove phones, the benefits would entirely be removed, and students would never learn how to use technology responsibly. Phones have these features and this potential; however, this is not how students use them. Instead, they are texting, watching videos or using social media. In addition, the few academic functions that phones offer are already available on school computers. Teachers can monitor students on these devices, therefore limiting distractions.
Phones can and should have a place in students’ lives, but that place should not be the classroom. The distractions and social challenges destroy any educational benefits the phones may offer. Students need learning environments that endorse attention, interaction and focus, not more screen time.
