It’s hard to balance a social life, academics, and extra-curricular activities. Despite being busy, many students spend any extra time on their phones, and this is impacting their grades. Most teens play games and post on social media, but few take advantage of the many resources that are available on the Internet in order to succeed in school.
“If I have my phone around me while I’m doing my homework, I get distracted,” Kylie Nause (’18) said. “I go to look something up for homework, and I end up on social media.”
A Harbinger survey asking how much time students spend on technology a day showed that no matter the grade level, high schoolers spend an average of 2-5 hours on their phone every day. Most of these hours are spent on social media apps. The most popular app for underclassmen is Snapchat and for upperclassman it is Instagram.
However, there is a minority of students that use the Internet to benefit their academics.
“I study more with technology because of all the resources it has to offer,” said Dereck Wu (’20), a 4.0 student.
While most students admit they are constantly on their phones, the majority of them say that their phones are negatively affecting their grades. So why do teens still use their phones if it is impacting their grades?
“I know grades are important, but social life can get in the way and seem like something I need to tend to at the moment, when I should be focusing on schoolwork,” Courtney Butz (’20) said. “When I’m on my phone, I completely shut out everything else so then I’m completely lost when I look back up.”
Teachers are also seeing how phones are affecting student’s grades and have noticed that cheating is much more relevant because of the easy access of phones.
“Technology is a huge distraction, cheating is much more prevalent,” Social studies teacher Jonathan Shinnick said. “I know that cheating happens because you hear kids talking and I know that kids take pictures of material and text it to their friends.”
Time management plays a big role in getting schoolwork done. Time wasted on refreshing Instagram for the fourth time is valuable time that should be used wisely. Some students don’t realize that these management skills of balancing their academics and social life will carry out through their adulthood.
If your grades don’t satisfy you, ask yourself how much time are you spending on your phone and you could have an easy fix.