I recently showed a video to my classes. It was for a purported new app for their phones called Lookout. According to this ad, Lookout would allow you to keep staring down at your phone while it monitored what was in front of you. You could get a look at potential obstacles in your path on your phone screen while you also scanned your e-mail, checked your social media, etc.
The ad was fake. (You can look it up on YouTube by searching Lookout. It’s really quite well done!) Looking out at my classes while showing this, I saw roughly 50% of them light up with joy. At last – this was what they’d been waiting for all their lives! I also wonder if any of my readers had the same reaction while reading my first paragraph.
Is something like this in our future? I hope not. Studies already reveal that we have more neck issues from all the staring down and more tendinitis issues from all the thumbing on screens. Vision problems and dizziness are too often related to the ubiquitous screens in our lives.
Addiction is a big problem. A “need” for a screen and to check up on things and keep up with what’s happening has become a dire issue. Recently, the student ambassadors at NRHEG hosted a cell phone challenge. The gist was that students had to place their phones at the back of the room each class period; if they did so, the teacher would sign a sheet indicating so. Students who completed the challenge were eligible for fabulous prizes.
In my classroom, this is an expectation every day anyway. Since about March of last year, I’ve asked all my students to do this. And sometimes you’d think that I was asking them to give me all their money and their first-born child! What reason could you have to need your phone during my class? They all have Chromebooks for their work. There is not a need to use Snapchat or Instagram during classtime. This is the time for work. If there’s an emergency, parents can call the office.
Do you want to know how many kids completed this challenge? 52. That’s right, out of 500 or so kids, about 10% went without their phones during classes for one day. They still got them between classes and at lunch. They could still check all those vital updates at those times. And yet… 10%.
One of our teachers asked a class why they weren’t doing this. The number one reason? Parents tended to text them during the day. And I don’t want to be too high-falutin’ here, because I’ve been known to shoot a text to my daughter during the day, knowing I’ll usually get a quick response. None of it’s really been so important that I couldn’t wait a while to know, though.
Still, that excuse seems flimsy to me. I hope parents aren’t creating such an intricate dialogue with kids during school hours that the children feel obligated to respond. It seems more likely that all the social media outlets make people feel like they need to check frequently – you’d hate to miss something! After all, if someone doesn’t quickly respond to your email or text or other communication, don’t you also get a little antsy?
Michelle and I recently attended a show in Minneapolis. After an hour and a half, when the show was over and the lights came up, I glanced around. Again, this is an estimate, but I felt like over half the people, instinctually, reached for their phones to check their messages. I really felt like talking to my wife and the friends with us about the show and how entertaining it was, but I must have been in a minority.
I like to check Facebook and Twitter. I usually do so daily, but I sometimes find that I go a day or so without scrolling through my Twitter feed. (Facebook is where I play Candy Crush, so, you know, priorities.) But I don’t think it’s just my age that causes me not to think I need to be constantly connected. I see plenty of folks my age or older who are among the first to check their phones after any lull in a presentation or show.
What are we coming to as a society? Do we need to be connected 24/7 so badly that we’ll risk our health to do so? And the young people, kids who have never known life without a cell phone? What will become of them? Will the addiction grow so strong that they can’t function without checking everything in their web of information every five minutes?
Students aren’t allowed to get their phones until I have wrapped up class and given permission, usually with about two minutes to go. Quite often, there will be three or four minutes left when I get asked if they can retrieve the devices. It’s almost a hunger in their eyes, and the scrolling that goes on is unbelievable. I actually see and hear sighs of relief once the phone is back in their hands.
Maybe I’m just showing my age, but I don’t think so. We need to learn to temper these desires, the same as we would for other things that can be enjoyed in moderation. I don’t know about you, but I enjoy looking at people and engaging in conversation, not just keeping my eyes down as a way of interacting with the world around me. Look up.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is inveigle, which means to trick somebody through deceit or flattery, as in, “The online predator inveigled the unsuspecting social media member into sending him money through a plea that reeked of untruth.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!