Phone use in the classroom has been a hot topic in schools for the past decade and it seems something needs to be done about it. Phones offer a great opportunity for people to connect with one another and were created to make communication easier. But do students use it as a crutch? Is it really a tool? Scientists suggest from BMC Psychiatry that: “Phones seem to be more harmful than useful. Many students have shown symptoms of anxiety, depression and stress primarily directed from phone use, and it’s believed that by controlling this factor we can increase the levels of mental health and improve the quality of life at school.”

When using our phones in school and in our social life we’re often multitasking, which in reality isn’t really effective for performance. When doing multiple things at the same time we use our prefrontal cortex and even though multitasking is possible our brain lacks the ability to perform at the same ability when completing a single task. Our brain benefits in long term memorization when we focus on one task at a time. 

Anxiety and stress are common problems from using social media and other elements of technology. Social media covers almost 65% of all stress and anxiety build up from people around the world. Our brain uses multiple components when identifying and dealing with stress. Our amygdala is used to identify stress and anxiety. This brain structure sends messages to our HPA axis which then deals with our emotional stressors which are things in our environment that make us feel a certain way. When our brain structures have an overload of stress we can experience heart problems, stroke and high blood pressure. 

Phone use during class time brings in a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety. Including myself, I seem to find myself pointlessly scrolling on social media while in class. Attention span seems to be an ongoing issue in classes and has forced teachers to adapt their teaching styles, one of the main causes of this is our phones and limiting that could significantly reduce distractions and increase attention and performance throughout the entire class. Nate Brady from the senior class states: “Phones offer a lot of benefits and are needed in school.” Callum Schofield from the freshman class also had a similar view and said: “It’s a tool for staying in contact with family members.” From interviewing and getting perspectives from people in Ipswich High School, it seems that phones are looked at as a necessity because of their tools. However phones seem to have more of a negative effect when listening to the perspectives of the students. Estelle Gromko, an IHS senior, states: “Phones are used more as a distraction than a tool and are commonly used in a negative way.” Ella Murphy from the freshmen class also mentioned the negative aspect of having a phone in school and said: ”Her classmates often lose focus in class because of the constant distraction of notifications on their phones.” When talking to Mr. Mabbott, an IHS math teacher, he said: “Phones are very strong from a technology standpoint; however a lot of people are using them as a crutch. It becomes the default.” Teachers have seen an improvement this year specifically in self regulating phones but overall still seeing it as a problem.

Looking forward it seems it’s going to be important to realize the difference between using a phone as a tool or as a distraction. Other communities surrounding Ipswich have removed phones from their classrooms and have had little backlash in doing so. Should Ipswich be one of those communities? Should we not?  This ongoing issue shouldn’t be something we continue to talk about and we need a solution. Our screen times are constantly getting worse; our attention spans are getting shorter and we need to see change. The average screen time for a highschooler is 8 hours and 39 minutes a day and that number is significantly driven by our phones. Many of the issues surrounding mental health come from that screen time. Before phone bullying was an in person problem,\; now it’s everywhere with our technology. Our ability to say whatever we want online and on social media is endless and has been a leading cause of stress and anxiety on top of the normal difficulties of being a tennager.