I want you to picture this.
You look down to see a notification. A Snapchat. You open it to see your friend pulling a silly face and you pull one back. You start to open other Snapchat, and before you know it you’ve scrolled through your Instagram feed, and then your Facebook. “Time to start the worksheet” you hear your teacher say as you snap back into reality. What class am I in? What was the task we had to complete? For many of you, this sounds way too familiar.
Phones whether we want to acknowledge or not, are negatively impacting our learning. Banning phones in schools is necessary to take a positive step in regaining control over technology.
Being a student myself, I know that your mobile phone is a big if not the biggest distraction in the classroom. Impulse control in our teens is ultimately non-existent and the distraction of phones should be therefore eliminated, helping students, to help themselves. Premier Daniel Andrews agrees that Victoria is ready for the measure and “wants our kids focused on learning, not Snapchatting or texting”. By doing so, students are able to learn to be less reliant on their phones and more invested in their education, because ultimately education is the most important thing in life. Education gives us knowledge of the world around us and changes it into something better. It develops in us a perspective of looking at life. It helps us build opinions and have points of view on things in life. It helps to build us as a person, and well it makes us, us. With the current situation of Coronavirus the banning of phones is detrimental to enforce. The significant amount of time missed at school will put students on the back foot. Every. Single. Class. Will be so much more important, this is the time that we need to support students more than we ever have before.
Moreover, students’ education is not the only thing at stake, social skills are being affected as students choose to be on their phones instead of socializing with peers. Social skills are vitally important for the development of students in forming positive relationships with others and are a necessity for their future careers. McKinnon Secondary School, a Government school in Melbourne has observed “improved social connections, relationships, and interactions in the school”. Many other schools have also enforced this rule and the negative impacts brought by this implementation are nil. Education without social skills is somewhat useless, and vice versa. Social skills are important because they are the foundation for having positive relationships with others with your partners, friends, and for your career. Social skills allow you to connect with other people on a level that is important in life so that you can have more in-depth relationships with others.