“65% of students still use cellphones in school premises even being aware of the official ban;(and)  35% of pupils admit cheating using their phones” (NoPlag.com) This new technological era promised extensive opportunities in order to make information more accessible and knowledge “public” for anyone desiring it. However, it seems that this handheld device is causing the opposite. Cellphones are preventing school students from learning.

Smartphones are a trend that has been going on for the last century, and it seems strange for people to actually not own one. This new phones are completely connected to the web, which allow access to pretty much any information the user desires and works as a quick and easy communication method among users. These features all sound amazing and make communication easy, and it certainly does. However, its purpose might be different in the school environment with teenagers that might not use up their full potential.

Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook are all commonly used social media apps among students that allow users to share and view content on people in general. This has become the major distraction tool to stop students from learning. We, teenagers become obsessed with this applications that consume most of our time, including school hours. It has been proven that we receive a euphoric response when we receive a text, causing focus to simply stop. This is the most common problem around teenagers with phones, they deny their attention due to the constant notifications received during class.

Students are reducing the information received and retained because of phones, causing stress and lack of learning. However, it reaches another level being much worse, cheating. Since students retain less information, they will many times refer to cheating in order to get through exams. ”More than one third of teens with cell phones admit to having stored information on them to look at during a test or texting friends about answers”(UsNews.com) Finding answers in the internet or texting friends is simple and fast, becoming a reliable cheating tool. Cellphones become the assistant tool to cheat in an exam and become a reliable way to pass an exam.

Even though cell phones allow positive and necessary features in children lives like emergency calling from their parents being instantaneous or access to lots of informations, they are still a threat to education. This benefits are easily replaced, where emergency calls are done directly to the school and alert the child and computers can simply do all actions phones do. Cell Phones act negatively on student’s learning.

Cellphones are a marvelous invention that in a school environment work counterproductively. They promote distractions with constant notifications reaching students phones during class resulting in less learning. They also work as an easy cheating tool that helps students find information they are not supposed to use. It is a constant threat to children education and bring negative results. Sadly, one of the most innovative inventions in history is used inadequately and makes the human race go backward instead of forward.