As in the world we are in today, the main topic for our youth is our phones being our main focus instead of our education. Many schools across the country have adapted to a strict no phone rule. In order to limit distractions and improve our academic performance, resources have proven that the goal doesn’t meet the expectations. 

Phones are a valuable part of being able to communicate to others, for safety, and even better to learn. Obviously, it is a distraction with different apps like Tiktok or Snapchat but most of the time the youth aren’t using it if the teacher is speaking about an important topic. We focus a lot on the students but I believe teachers aren’t helping the situation either by giving students the chance to check their phones as not teaching something. Putting a video on or giving us a free period is just a perfect opportunity for us to get distracted as peoples attention spans are low.

While parents and students could rely on the phones to communicate with each other, In This Florida School District, nearly 20% of parents reported that the policy would harm students well-being by not having that contact during or after school with unexpected events. This isn’t just in Florida—there’s many articles with this type of information like in Ohio. On a different note, a study from the University of Birmingham found that in the UK, students academic performance worsened without their phones as they resorted to sleeping which ultimately lowered grades. Even in the U.S, Professor Chistopher Ferguson compared the data of earlier reports to now and concluded that the phones do not significantly impact learning.

So, after all this research, why are we still making a ban on phones that won’t give us the data to showcase its negative impact? I believe that the government is trying to ban phones to have a simple fix for less distractions but it doesn’t show that in data. Giving us more policies that can teach responsibility gives the youth structure and allows us to make the best choices for ourselves. Phones aren’t the problem, the misuse of it is, which is our personal choice.