Would you rather listen to your teacher talk about World War 2 and fail your big exam or watch the lastest new Tiktok that everybody is learning? As a community everybody relies on their cell phones everywhere but their presence at schools has made a huge downfall. The board of education should focus on reevaluating how cell phones affect students at school. Students using cellphones at school have a negative impact in their education which causes students to struggle. The board and other people in the community don’t really recognize this problem and how it affects all the students because they don’t pay close enough attention to each student’s grades and don’t ask for enough feedback from teachers. They also don’t ask themselves why the rates of students failing are increasing dramatically. The change to decrease the usage of cell phones in schools can impact students and the school as a whole greatly.

While cell phones became an important feature in everyday lives the usage of cell phones caused many negative impacts at school.  Many students cheat on their school work, which stops students from actually learning anything because the information isn’t coming from their brains and it even causes students to face certain consequences like failing the test or assignment because they cheated on it. Back in middle school getting my first smartphone gave me tons of ideas of how my smartphone would benefit me in the classroom only to find out it doesn’t because once I pull my phone out during a test it would always get taken away. Nowadays it’s easier to get away with cheating by yourself or among your peers at school.  Jennifer Betts in Love to Know explains how smartphones can access the web and it provides high-tech ways for students to look for test answers online and to text each other the answers quickly and quietly. This causes students to not be able to develop their own skills in each subject causing them not to take full advantage of a real and free education during their adolescent years.

Cell phones cause a distraction among the students which is a big concern. Throughout a school day a student’s phone can receive tons of notifications from multiple apps causing students to lose sight of what’s important, which is their education. When I’m at school I am guilty of being attached to my phone which is a distraction even for me. When hearing even one little beep or vibration on my phone as it lights up because I’m receiving a notification I’m quick to pick my phone up and check what it is from then boom my eyes are glued to the screen. Everyday in a classroom everybody is either texting or has their airpods in making it extremely difficult to concentrate. Everybody may claim to be listening and paying attention while using their phones but in reality they’re not because it’s hard to multitask. Louise Gaille in Vittana explains that only about 2% of students are effective multitaskers. These statistics show that the other 98% of students aren’t truly paying attention in school and are probably struggling due to their cell phones distracting them.

Even though cell phones may sound like a good idea at school, the distractions and cheating they cause outweigh any positives. Schools should recognize these problems and create several policies to reduce screen time at school that ensure that students listen to their teachers and concentrate on their school work. In order to address these problems schools need to provide a phone pouch for each classroom to enforce students to store their phones in so students would be able to be on top of their game and be able to be their best and reach their full potential.