As you can probably guess by the title, I am going to be talking about the problem with cell phones. While I know we all love our cell phones, there is a problem with being on them so much. We are addicted to having our phones and playing on them. I am not immune to this curse either. So, lets talk about this problem and how we can fix it.

What is the problem?

Phones make us more disconnected from society. Since we all have phones in our pockets, we are more likely to text or snap our friends and family than actually hang out with them. And while this is not always a problem because our phones allow us to get in touch with people who live far away, we need to be able to know how to balance it out. The more time we spend looking at a screen, the less time we are spending with our family and friends.

Matthew Moeder, a senior said “No, I don’t think there is a problem with cell phones. If teachers would either find a way to captivate their students, or make rules so that they can’t have their phones during certain times of their classrooms, I have seen that these methods lower phone usage during inappropriate times. Sort of like a give and take method.”

Phones are also very distracting. When our phones light up with notifications, we almost always feel the need to check it immediately. This can lead to distractions in the classroom, in our social life, and even while driving. For the classroom, this can mean that we are not paying attention in class and are missing out on some of the lesson time so we are falling behind. However, in the case of driving, being distracted by our phones can have dire consequences. Driving is already a dangerous activity, with some many different factors on why you can get in a wreck. Adding in one more distraction, like being on your phone, can make driving that much more dangerous because you are not giving it your full attention.

August Siefkes, another senior said “I think there is a problem with cell phones: people are becoming more addicted to their screens and neglect what’s going on in the world around them. Unfortunately, I don’t think anything can be done about this. People are just too stuck in their screen-dominated way of life.”

How can we fix this?

One way that we can start to fix this is by enforcing a screen time limit for ourselves. We can do this by letting our parents have parental control, which means they would be able to lock apps on our phones so that we can’t get on them. I know that this plan will not be for everyone. Another thing we can do, is to just be strict about how much time we spend on our phones.

While having a phone is important because if anything happens to us, we have direct contact to everyone, it is important to know that having a phone is not everything and we need to learn how to better balance our time with them.