Smart Phones: Classroom Friends or Foes?

Smart Phones: Classroom Friends or Foes? It’s no surprise that these days all across the United States in any high school and in any classroom, one can find teenagers avidly texting under their desks or behind their text books. While texting may seem innocent enough to the students committing the act, it also proposes the danger and risk that the student could be getting answers for the quiz that they are taking from a friend that’s outside the classroom. The introduction of smart phones, such as the iPhone and the Blackberry seem to have made matters of this phenomenon even worse. Now, instead of just having access to other students via texting, kids have the ability to surf the internet or upload audio clips on their cell phones that could be helpful to them while they’re in class. While some would argue that the access to all this information could, in fact, be beneficial to students in the classroom, others would argue the exact opposite. The increased use of these smart phones decreases a student’s attention span, expands the amount of cheating done, exposes students to information that might not be correct, and also increases the amount of disturbances in a classroom. Students of this century rely heavily on the internet to get them through their studies and now that the access to the internet is available on their phones, that reliance will grow to be even greater. With that constant growing reliance on these smart phones, the quality of this generation’s education will begin rapidly decreasing. The ability to concentrate in class and on the lecture the teacher is giving is already a difficult task itself to most students, even without the introduction of texting, music players, or the smart phones. By adding those components the attention level paid to the lesson is slowly diminishing. A student wanting to waste time in class not only has the option to stare out of the window, but now, they can bury their phones in their books and text, surf the web,