By ABBY WILLIAMS
Sheridan High School English Teacher
My students and I are on Fall Break this week, and I have one hope for them as they enjoy their time off: That they do some of it off their phones, off social media, while talking to and interacting with people in person. Through my 15 years in education, I have seen trends and fads pass by. I’ve known kids to struggle with hunger, drug abuse, lack of access to a safe home environment and various other incredibly difficult problems. While these and other issues do affect many of today’s students, the biggest problem that will negatively affect more kids than any other is smartphones.
Smartphones offer many advantages to kids and grownups alike. We have instant access to information about any topic, we can stay safer and more informed in severe weather conditions, and we can keep in contact with family at the touch of a button. Students in my classes use their phones to play review games, check their grades online, and take pictures or look up images for assignments. I see and recognize the positives, but I strongly believe the negatives outweigh the positives in this situation.
Smartphones allow easy access to social media applications. There was a time not long ago when kids and teenagers didn’t have phones; if they wanted to access social media, they pretty much had to do it at home on a computer, maybe in a shared family living space. This potentially allowed for parents to have more knowledge of their children’s social media usage.
Today, with seemingly every person in our country with a phone in hand, kids can access social media on their own without any parental supervision at all. This can put young people in situations they shouldn’t be in online, perhaps communicating with people older than them or unknown to them.
Another negative of kids being online and on social media often and without supervision is cyberbullying. My students have discussed with me the way it makes them feel to be targeted and discussed publicly online. For them, it’s just as devastating as having a person say something negative about them in person.
According to a study by the American Academy of Pediatrics, “teens who frequently engage with social networking sites exhibit signs of depression, which may be due to the intensity of their online experiences.” The study goes on to show that teens who are already struggling may have this risk intensified by their time spent online. Further, this time spent on social media “may amplify risky behaviors such as substance abuse, risky sexual activity, or other self-destructive behaviors.”
Another negative of the smartphone era is the decreased amount of face-to-face interaction. Kids are losing the ability to hold a conversation, look someone in the eye, and just interact on a basic level with another person. So many of their social interactions take place via their phones that those skills are fading away. With much of their social interaction online, young people can feel unhappy about their relationships.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse has surveyed high school students with its Monitoring the Future survey since 1975. The survey asks about drug use, online and offline activities, and students’ happiness levels, among other topics. The survey results in recent years have shown a strong correlation between happiness and non-screen activities; in other words, kids who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy and kids who spend more time than average on non-screen activities are more likely to be happy.
I love my job as a teacher mostly because I love spending time with high school kids. They are smart and funny and clever, and I’m always excited to hear what great ideas they’re going to come up with next. In 2018 though, as we face a future full of online interactions and faces buried in screens, I am concerned for their well-being as they become more dependent on technology and less on personal interactions.
Abby Williams is a sophomore English teacher at Sheridan High School.