Every time I go into a restaurant, I am saddened by the number of families staring at their phones while eating instead of spending time together in conversation. We are chained to our phones in unhealthy ways and need to break away from them.
Last year, I did an experiment in my advisory class. It lasted 30 minutes and involved 17 students who had cell phones that day with them in class. I instructed all of them to turn on the sound on their phones and each time they received any type of notification, they were to go to the board and draw a tally mark. This included text messages, Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, GroupMe, Remind, anything that caused their phone to make a sound.
I hope you are already processing how many notifications you believe we tallied during that half hour. As this was going on, we had chosen a topic to discuss as a group. I wanted them to get the full effect. Take a moment to put yourself in the shoes of my students. We were sitting in a classroom, trying to have a discussion while phones are making a variety of sounds and students are getting up and down to go and put their tally mark on the board.
How many notifications do you think we tallied? 100? 200? Nope, keep going. In 30 minutes, with 17 students, we tallied 450 notifications. That is 15 a minute. On average, each student received 26. That is almost one notification per minute. That means that about every minute, a student is looking away from the teacher to “check their phone.” About one time every minute, their eyes and their minds are leaving the instruction that is going on in the class to find out who snap chatted a picture, who posted on Instagram or why someone is texting them.
That’s what teachers are competing with in the classroom.
I am going into my 20th year of teaching. I have more students dealing with anxiety and stress than ever before. I have more students whose attention I can’t keep for even 15 minutes because they are so distracted by their phones.
Our youth group recently went on a mission trip to Wyoming. The youth minister decided this would be an electronic free trip. After their return, I asked him how the trip went. He said it was great. They played travel games while they were driving and really interacted more with each other. He said that even the students commented on how much they enjoyed not having the burden of their cell phones with them.
I’ll be the first to admit that teenagers know how to use technology better than most adults. However, they don’t know how to handle technology usage. That’s where adults become so important. Of course we can set boundaries. We are the grown-ups! It is our responsibility to teach students how to use technology in a healthy way!
We need to help teens establish boundaries. We can do this in a variety of ways. First, we must lead by example. We can set limits on screen time. We can have cell free zones – like the dinner table or when our kids are working on their homework. Every family is different and can determine what those boundaries are.
We owe it to our children to teach them how to use technology without allowing it to control them. Most teenagers can’t do it on their own, and parents will get quite a bit of push-back when they try. Hang in there! Your kids will appreciate you for it when they are able to have face-to-face conversations at job interviews or advocate for themselves with a college professor.
With Eyes on the Cross 