SCHOOL AGAINST THE SMARTPHONE

primary education, friendship, childhood, technology and people concept - group of happy elementary school students with smartphones and backpacks outdoors over multimedia icons

Over a matter of time, technology has continued evolving to grant consumers with the ability to communicate almost instantly to each other; as a result of this it’s grown to be the ideal function of expediency for American students communicating and keeping up to date with their friend’s lives.

Along with the development of technology, the clash between schools and social media is equally continuing to grow; now that Almost 90 percent of American teens say they use at least one social media site, teachers are saying that these sites and apps are taking over children’s lives.

Yes of course phones can be very distracting; however educationalists say teenagers’ using their mobile phones in school noticeably affects performance, and also leads them to make irrational bad decisions.

Although schools are there to give children educational insight, it is becoming evident that when it comes to social media, students outsmart the system.

A study was conducted by Wisconsin State Journal, involving four Wisconsin public schools who eagerly volunteered to participate: East High School, Wright and Cherokee Middle schools, and West High School.

The four schools agreed to go ahead and cease all Wi-Fi networks for popular social media apps such as twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram; the goal was to observe and overview just how dramatically the teenagers grades, conduct and schools general protection is influenced by the pupils use of these sites.

The executive director of syllabus for the Madison School District, Cindy Green, told the Wisconsin State Journal:

Now this all seems like it could potentially work, right? But everybody knows how crafty teenagers can be (especially when it comes to their beloved smart phones). And there just one huge issue… Students can potentially avoid the whole program all together; outsmarting the system all over again by simply using their internet data and not depending on the schools connection to use social media sites. Attributable to this, teachers have kindly asked parents to help them restrict their teenager’s access to the apps on school grounds, but this could be a whole other task in itself…

Even though most teachers and parents think the investigations an excellent idea, and anticipate that students safety and grades will progress as the study goes forward, some students and parents strongly dislike the idea. Teachers have reminded the parents that not all communication with their child is lost due to the study; parents can still contact the teenagers if needs be through e-mail or telephone call.

The second problem is now that students are potentially going to be relying on their data plans to connect with other people on their phones; bills are consequently going to start increasing. The principal of West High School sent home an email to the student’s parents last Friday, notifying them of the new plan:

In spite of the fact that teachers are able to forbid phones and restrict Wi-Fi, they can’t entirely control students from using their own networks if they want to…