Behind the door of every bathroom and the high school in the USA you will find the same thing: a child with his phone, uses his fingers cross to scroll or tap messages.
Young people feel the same Fomo train that we do to take out a cell phone and check whether they have not missed something, and just like we tap your screens on pretty much every opportunity: time to spend in time, Hall, A journey into the toilet, a moment in class when the teacher looks in the other direction and with a lot of certainty when you see another child with his phone. The longing for scrolling is contagious and can spread a hall, a cafeteria or a classroom in minutes.
Educators, parents and even teenagers themselves agree that this constant source of distraction is not great for learning. They are also increasingly concerned that the staring on a phone in non -academic times such as lunch brings into time that teenagers need to socialize and build relationships with peers.
How bad is the problem?
A new study published in Jama Pediatrics showed that young people spent an average of 1.5 hours of their 6.5-hour school day on their phone. This corresponds to 27% of the 5.59 hours of teenagers who were spent on their phones every day.
The researchers “recruited a diverse national sample of young people without the mobile radio stations having their schools on the spot,” Lauren Hale, professor at Stony Brook Medicine and one of the authors of the study, told Huffpost.
Instead of reporting their own screen time, the researchers used a “passive detection system”, said Hale.
“We could see exactly which apps they used for how long and at what time of day. We used this data to use a smartphone during the school day, ”she added. The data worth fourteen days was included in the study.
More than half of the teenagers spent at least 66 minutes a day with their phones, and a quarter of the teenagers were on their phones for two or more hours during school.
The apps that teenagers used most on school were messaging, Instagram, video streaming, audio and e -mails, which indicates that they use their phones to make practical contacts in a building filled with other teenagers.
What are the effects of this phone?
Although the study has not tried to measure the effects of the use of the teenagers at school, Hale said that as an educator and parents, she is concerned about the effects, both academic and social.
“School time is a time to learn, listen, read, write and real interaction. It is a time to interact with the same age all day with peers, including speeches, jokes, food, shares, ”said Hale.
“I am concerned that you will miss these advantageous aspects if you spend too much time to look down at your device,” she added.
Even if the disturbing calls and texts come from loving parents, they have a prize. The incessant possibility of contact can steal opportunities to practice independence.
Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician and director of the digital wellness laboratory in the Boston Children’s Hospital, said that there is a concern: “Mama or dad all day in your pocket as you are, whether you have to intervene with teachers or employees, other students, The child can never find out how to act as an effective, healthy and sensitive citizen. “
At the same time, said Rich, telephones – like the bulky desktop computers that preceded them – tools that young people have to learn, and we all know that children learn through the best.
“The basics of using a smartphone can and should be taught at school,” said Rich. “Teach children to use these tools effectively for what they do well and to switch off if they are not the best tool for the job.”
It is worth noting that telephones are a problem at school, most teenage use takes place outside of school lessons. Parents share the responsibility for the use of their children at home.
“Asking the schools to limit the assignment if there is no other time in the life of a child is not effective,” Shari Camhi, superintendent of the Free School District Baldwin Union, told Huffpost.
“Schools have not given the students smartphones. In many cases, the youngest children own more expensive and unrestricted smartphones, ”said Camhi.
Baldwin New York’s superintendent says that the responsibility extends beyond the parents. Camhi found that some of the apps access most on social media and said: “It is important to determine stricter regulations regarding such channels. Technology companies have to be held accountable to the products that they market for young people. “
Which solutions are possible?
Most parents are not ready to take phones away from their children. They don’t want their children to spend school, but they don’t want their children to be too far away from their telephones.
“Most parents I talk to clearly support a Bell-to-Bell ban from smartphones in schools,” said Hale.
What a “ban” looks like can vary enormously from one school to the next. Some children can keep their phones in their pockets, backpacks or lockers for the day. Some are supposed to “park” their phones in a wall organizer or a box in the classroom. Others receive a special blocking bag (Yondr is a company that is only opened in certain places or by using a device.
All of these scenarios have their advantages and disadvantages. Children who leave the lessons to write in the bathroom is a problem. Another has no access to a telephone in an emergency – despite its low probability, the ghost of a shooting situation for school increases for most children, parents and educators.
Rich said he found that the majority of the parents “want their children to have smartphones so that they can reach each other during the day”.
Some officials leave the logistics of the cell phone bans to individual schools. In New York, the proposed legislation of governor Kathy Hochul for “distracting-free schools” calls for “non-decreasing use of smartphones and other internet-enabled personal devices on the school premises in K-12 schools for the entire school day, including lessons and other environments such as lunch and study hall periods ” – provide the debt applications in order to decide what“ unclear ”means and how they are kept the phones of the students. The invoice illustrates 13.5 million US dollars to help schools buy “warehouse solutions”.
Schools try out a variety of strategies across the country. The people in our Facebook community community in our Huffpost parents report excessive bags of organizers and yondr bags and have their phones at administrators at the beginning of the day. A teacher commented that she asked the students to use her phones quite often during class to take photos of her works of art. Others noticed how challenging it can be for teachers to enforce their own ban.
“If the administrators do not fully assert it, the teachers have no leg on which they have to stand,” commented one person. Others found that teachers did not enforce the ban evenly and that in some cases a lack of technology (i.e. laptops) lead the teachers to make children take their phones out in order to work in class.
Kaitlin Tiches, librarian in the digital wellness Lab, found how important it is to include teachers in these political decisions and listen to their feedback.
“Even the best dependent and communicated guidelines can cause tensions between teachers and students, and teachers should be supported throughout the process. Some research work has shown that teachers had a difficult time to maintain a mobile phone directive, even if they had contributed to creating them. It is therefore really important to recognize that these guidelines have to be tested with understanding that they may have to be refined, ”said Tiches.
The students also earn a voice in these negotiations, added them. “It is so important to understand the needs of all people who will be affected by the shift,” she said.
“For older pupils such as high school, who are included and really heard during this process, they could help build up a community Buy-in,” she added.
Another reason to include children? They are usually at least several steps before the game.
One parent commented: “My daughter said that children put other things in the bag, like just the telephone shell and some stones for weight, so that it looks like they had blocked their phones, but they hold the actual phone All day with them. “