How has the phone policy affected you? Are you better with screen time or worse? This school year, the phone policy was instituted not only here at Oakmont, but at other Massachusetts schools as well.  Its purpose is to hopefully curb teenagers’ addiction to their phones, and make students pay more attention to what is going on in class and less to what’s going on on their phone. 

Despite the policy’s original intent though, could it be making the ongoing phone addiction worse? Various students are saying that since the start of the school year, they have only become more attached to their phone during breaks and outside of school. To speak personally, everyday in class, I see my classmates immediately run up and grab their phones from the caddy the second we get a break from the lesson and when class ends. It’s if they’re addicts itching for another hit. If that’s the case then, is the phone policy really helping to stop nomophobia or is it just being counterproductive?

These issues are so prevalent that when I ask people if they have been more addicted to their phones since the school year started only a month and a half ago, about 7 out 10 people had a resounding “Yes”. It wasn’t even something they had to think about. It was immediate. If this is the effect of the phone policy, is it really serving its purpose, or is it  just doing more harm than good? If so, then is the policy really necessary? 

I would argue that it’s not. For one simple reason, in classes that make students put their phones away, I see the addiction and almost frenzy that I mentioned earlier all the time. But in classes where teachers trust students to put their phones away themselves, I don’t see this at all. On top of that, in the latter, kids, for the most part, aren’t on their phones and are actually paying more attention to what is going on in class.

Whether or not we have a policy for phones isn’t up to me, but the phone policy that we have right now certainly isn’t making things any better. Especially, seeing how the issue has only gotten worse as the school year has gone on, goes to show that this isn’t an issue that will simply fade away over time. And it is only going to get worse as time goes on.