By Gabrielle Onyema
gabrielleonyemnyem.wordpress.com

If you’re under the age of 22, you’ve definitely used a cell phone in class, most likely without permission and away from the eyes of the teacher. Is that an assumptive statement? Yeah. Does it make it any less true for this high school senior? Nope.

Nine out of ten teens have a cell phone these days, according to bullyingstatistics.org. That means in a class of 30, only three kids are without cellular distraction devices.
And a distraction indeed, stock full of apps, online magazines, games, and videos galore.

Whenever a lesson gets a little dry, the instant gratification of cell phone entertainment is literally in the palm of your hand. The long term effects on children and teenagers is still uncertain, but many believe good comes with the bad.

In the documentary “Consumer Kids,” it is implied that small children introduced to tablets and smart phones early on have a much harder time adapting to non-tech surfaces such as books or writing paper.

Other studies suggest that prolonged use on smartphones affects attention span, diminishing it. From a personal observation, I would certainly agree.

Freshman year, I didn’t see too many kids trying to text under the desk. Many of us didn’t have phones then, and many of us weren’t repeat cellular offenders. By senior year, not only were there text masters, but a higher disregard of school rules in favor of a few moments of enjoyment on a cell phone. Perhaps this is the effect of attention spans reducing already…? If so, then at this rate when my generation has grown older, we won’t be physically able to leave the house without our mobile devices, for fear of losing sanity. Sounds like a plot straight out of a Vonnegut novel!