Post by billhammond on May 11, 2024 11:12:12 GMT -5
Letter to the editor in the Duluth paper:
It’s time for schools to make difficult decisions regarding cellphone use. As a graduating senior, I’ve watched how the influence of cellphones and social media has skyrocketed since COVID-19. Both of these forms of technology are still in their emergent phases, and long-term research of their impacts is not yet complete. Yet the short-term findings on the damaging effects on mental health, physical well-being, and developing brains are already deeply alarming. This is not something we can just let pan out, when the health of an entire generation is at stake. I am a part of that generation, and I can already see the toll it has taken on my peers. I even see how it is affecting me, and yet the addictive elements of cellphones and social media make it difficult to control.
Teenagers can’t fight this themselves; they need adults and leaders in power to help.
This past year, when the Duluth school district announced cellphones should be kept in students’ lockers at all times, I was hopeful of change. I hoped I might be able to have normal conversations during downtime, without everyone immediately retreating to their phones. I hoped I could give a presentation in class and people might actually pay attention. I hoped I myself might do better at school, unburdened by my phone.
Yet, to my disappointment, cellphone rules have hardly been enforced. In response to this, I ask administrators and teachers to do better. If that means enduring the grumbling of some angsty teenagers or helicopter parents, so be it. I ask them to step up and form a true plan of action for cellphones to combat the mental health epidemic and cellphone addiction from which teenagers are suffering.
It’s time for schools to make difficult decisions regarding cellphone use. As a graduating senior, I’ve watched how the influence of cellphones and social media has skyrocketed since COVID-19. Both of these forms of technology are still in their emergent phases, and long-term research of their impacts is not yet complete. Yet the short-term findings on the damaging effects on mental health, physical well-being, and developing brains are already deeply alarming. This is not something we can just let pan out, when the health of an entire generation is at stake. I am a part of that generation, and I can already see the toll it has taken on my peers. I even see how it is affecting me, and yet the addictive elements of cellphones and social media make it difficult to control.
Teenagers can’t fight this themselves; they need adults and leaders in power to help.
This past year, when the Duluth school district announced cellphones should be kept in students’ lockers at all times, I was hopeful of change. I hoped I might be able to have normal conversations during downtime, without everyone immediately retreating to their phones. I hoped I could give a presentation in class and people might actually pay attention. I hoped I myself might do better at school, unburdened by my phone.
Yet, to my disappointment, cellphone rules have hardly been enforced. In response to this, I ask administrators and teachers to do better. If that means enduring the grumbling of some angsty teenagers or helicopter parents, so be it. I ask them to step up and form a true plan of action for cellphones to combat the mental health epidemic and cellphone addiction from which teenagers are suffering.
