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The feedback and comments to my last column:
“Hello…is anyone listening? Ban phones in the classroom” blew up my phone.
What I expected to hear about students and cellphones, I heard. And right when I thought I had heard it all – I quickly heard I had not. Many complained how the phone use in school has actually affected their kids’ friendships. Huh?
STAY ON TRACK
Besides not being surprised by such a random complaint – I was disappointed that what should be the topic at hand veered off the track. Focusing on the damage phones wreak in the classroom should have been the ONLY comments.
As teachers, every moment of the day, there’s nothing worse than trying to teach a lesson or have a normal conversation with a student and only getting less than half their attention as they paw at their phone.
We know that students’ phones are portals to a different world, one that is extremely hard to resist. The behavior is yet another reason for the erosion of connection to people. But this time it’s their friends and it’s called phubbing — short for “phone snubbing” — and it’s more than just rude.
The student guilty of it signals that whatever is happening on the phone — be it a game, a text, or TikTok post — is more important and worthy of attention than the person in front of them.
When phubbing happens regularly between two people in a relationship, arguments ensue. In the long run, cell phone addiction can do real damage to important school connections.
Phubbing is more than about being addicted to Snapchat or Instagram. It’s about denying a bonding moment of attention in favor of connecting with the screen.
IT’S A RUSH
Phones — and the social media and games and apps they contain — are basically dopamine slot machines, designed to keep people scrolling, liking, commenting, and TikTok checking. The major thing they distract from? Real human relationships.
In fact, the stranglehold that cell phones have on relationships has become so great it was given its own name. “Phubbing” A portmanteau of “phone” and “snubbing,” the term, while wholly strange to see written down is fairly self-explanatory and illustrates the nature of the cell phone student addiction pretty well.
After all, a snub is a rude and dismissive gesture, and the fact that the term used to describe their friends’ choice of device over quality time says a lot.
NOTHING CUTE ABOUT IT
While the term seems cutesy, phubbing is basically relationship napalm. One recent study found that the behavior actually facilitates student dissatisfaction on an almost subconscious level by creating emotional distance between friends.
Phubbing ruins the necessary school friendships and relationship building. When device usage goes from intermittent to consistent it begins to cut in on “normal socializing time” (time spent without technology).
Once upon a time, school friends had to contend with other social distractions but now they must contend with the device, which can be much more intrusive due to its portability. For kids, competing with an electronic device is not easy. The addictive powers make it impossible at times.
THE SECRET LIFE OF PHONES
In addition to the constant use of the phone, trouble can also start when device usage becomes secretive. Students who usually have no issues sharing and grabbing each other’s phones become immediately concerned when a friend’s phone is locked and the password not given quickly. And think of the horror that it’s because another wanted to merely say hello. (Hello is a word and action previously used by students to greet each before texting.)
We all know relationships can take place entirely by phone or text. So just imagine what the neglect does to kids attempting to develop non-phone based relationships – if that even exists anymore,
Perhaps there is a silver lining in all of this? No.
Perhaps it will soon change? No.
Perhaps parents should replace the words “student” and “kids” with “adult” and see where the problem truly lies? Yes.
This column is by Ritchie Lucas, Founder of The Student Success Project and Think Factory Consulting. He can be reached at 305-788-4105 or email at ritchie@thinkfactory.com and on Facebook and You Tube as The Student Success Project.
