Children walking down the streets are holding their cell phones using both hands, heads down, focusing on a screen. They are a group of three, none of which are exchanging any words. The point of this simple and prevalent illustration is to focus on the antisocial norm of today. Let us look at the opposite spectrum: at the Citadel, a military school in Charleston, SC, the students are required to spend a shift on watch for a whole hour in uniform not being able to use any communication other than their mouths. The good thing is that they have one other person to watch with them. This is a foreign concept to most first year knobs and it is quite awkward at first. Should spending an hour alone accompanied by one other person be awkward? 50 years ago, maybe not depending on who that person is. Today, the answer is an overwhelming, yes. Have you experienced an awkward time like the knobs: maybe you have been stuck in an elevator accompanied by a stranger? It was strange to the knobs at first, but they learn during those hours that genuinely getting to know the other person is not such a bad thing. In this example, we can see that the lack of technology allowed these people to socialize more personally than they would have if they could look at their phones. The Citadel does a great job of reversing the current trend of being dependent on cell phones while the rest of the world is not catching on. Technology such as hand-held devices--like cellphones, iPads, and laptops—are too overwhelmingly present among children who are not yet in high school, thus leading to a negative influence on their social motives and skills. Such technologies should be used modestly among children at home and in the classrooms and need to be monitored by parents and teachers.

The purpose of this first point is to explain how these hand-held devices are resulting in the crippling minds of youths. Mannheimer, a professor and faculty member of IUPUI enlightens us on the results of easy access to social media and phones on young people. Children who grow up using these devices tend to get bored much faster. In a 2015 study, Mannheimer discovers that children now get bored 30% faster than a child would from the 1980’s (Mannheimer). ADHD and ADD diagnostics are raising through the roof. Today, 1 in 5 children between the ages of 7 and 16 are diagnosed which is a 41% increase from 10 years prior (Mannheimer). Is there a coincidence with the amount of cell-phone usage? They are used to receiving short text messages and moving on to the next thing. They read small tweets coming from Twitter and continue to scroll down to see another short message. The kids watch a two-minute video on Facebook, and once again, move to the next thing. This has directly conditioned young minds to become isolated from long text-based books. Students read substantially less now, than when technology was not readily available and the diagnostics of ADD and ADHD explain why. The student’s attention spans are diminishing and it makes it much more difficult to read through a whole chapter of a textbook, due to this unintentional conditioning. Unlimited texting and data has made subtle silences into a nightmare and it has been turned into a fortitude to lean on. They immediately go to check the short, temporary new message. This has limited essential time for a human to sit back and think, ponder, and meditate on life and its current stance. The professor states that “They [teachers] worry that today’s students lack the cognitive wherewithal for deep, immersive reading and thus will never fully experience the profound learning that college can provide” (Mannheimer). It is very ironic that ‘smart phones’ can be informationally restricting. It’s a tradeoff, and I understand that we can receive information much quicker with a click of a button, but we lose so much retention when we are susceptible to this easy way out. Because we are used to quick and easy retention of information, reading novels and textbooks is becoming too much of a bothersome chore. 

Next, the essay will move toward the subject of the educational gap between the different students’ economical statuses. Not everybody can afford laptops or certain devices that are almost mandatory to use in a typical school system. A survey conducted by Susan Pinker discovered that more technology in classrooms has widened the academic gap between less privileged children and children from monetarily wealthy families. Obama, during his presidency, implemented his academic agenda after one of his state of the union addresses which consisted of schools incorporating more technology in their pedagogy. He planned to progress the ‘technologically behind’ school system to impress young parents and make a difference by adding more money into that budget on a federal level instead of at the state level. Pinker, a published writer of the New York Times said, “More technology in the classroom has long been a policy-making panacea. But mounting evidence shows that showering students, especially those from struggling families, with networked devices will not shrink the class divide in education. If anything, it will widen it” (Pinker). This claim is backed up by an experiment started in the early 2000’s by a Duke professor and economist who tracked a group of students throughout their education and its conclusion is alarmingly unfortunate. The ones who were struggling before are struggling even more with a decline in overall scores by 6%, and the ones who were succeeding are being more successful than ever in some situations. 

 The reasons for this downfall explained in the previous paragraph can be drawn from the fact that less privileged cannot afford adequate technology. If a school teacher assigns homework online, there are two choices the student may take: 1) they can buy an expensive piece of tech, or 2) they can spend inconvenient time at the school’s provided library where it can be busy, noisy, slow Wi-Fi, and many other occurrences. The U.S. wants to lessen the academic gap, but instead, the interference is doing quite the opposite. In fact, “Students who gain access to a home computer between the 5th and 8th grades tend to witness a persistent decline in reading and math scores” (Pinker). Even if the parents bought the family a computer, that does not make things all better. In most cases, the young students will find themselves playing games or looking at other things the internet has to offer as opposed to doing productive and meaningful activities including homework or looking up informative news. Is providing computers for the less fortunate a good investment? According to the research, that will only make the problem worse. Therefore, I believe that there should be an alternate form of completing homework without making computers a requirement, instead, schools could provide workbooks and other forms of assignments. 

If we were to hypothetically play along with Obama’s contradicting plan mentioned earlier, this question will pop into your mind, “How are we going to afford all of this additional money to go towards the schools?” The answer is more taxes on the people of America. Of course, we are all for receiving the benefits of the government, but not everyone wants to pay for them, thus providing a stronger argument for less technological uses. Obama’s plan mentioned earlier, made room for it by making it one of his campaign’s priorities. Would this have progressive impacts on our education? Not according to John Fleming who helps write an article full of statistics and graphs that helps bring up questions about spending more money through the education system. In 1970, the amount of money it takes to have one student go through one year of school cost about $4,000, in 2007 that number is over $9,000 (Fleming). Obviously, inflation and other things come into play, but does over doubling the amount of spending on education make the students twice as smart? Do we as an education system want to invest in a mammoth amount of money into an unknown return of knowledge? It is not worth the risk. To purchase, maintain, and replace the new installments will cost a pretty penny that will cause many conundrums.

Before this topic is discussed in more detail, it is important to mention that getting rid of the use of technology would be a disaster, but simply using it in modesty will be beneficial. How are the future generations supposed to survive in a world where computers and the latest smartphones are the cornerstone of progress and success? The answer is that they cannot if the school systems and young parents get rid of it completely. It’s just like a sweet and delectable chocolate cake, where if you eat it in moderation, you will be satisfied. If you eat the whole entire treat, it may be temporarily satisfying, but if you wait a few minutes, the consequences will make their presence known. The point of this illustration is to be related directly to the usage of the virtual world of communication through phones, iPads, and computers. They can be extremely useful to communicate an idea to somebody or be used to better articulate an idea while teaching students, but if technology becomes the center of it all, reality is lost. True communication of face to face interactions gets lost. Making a bigger impact on the world gets lost. What is better to do if you want to learn how to play Ultimate Frisbee: watch 24 hours of techniques and games and be done, or watch only an hour of video and spend the rest of the 23 hours practicing out on the field, experiencing the sport yourself? Moderation is key. 

Next, I would like to empathize with the opposing view who support technologically advanced classrooms. Small children are sometimes having to carry around all their textbooks throughout the school day. On average, a textbook weighs 5-10 lbs. which is absurd for some children who weigh 85 lbs. That is almost half of their body weight if they carry 3 or 4 books. A solution to that problem is either to invest in a laptop where the child can access online textbooks because a computer is less than 4 textbooks in a bookbag, or the more responsible and cheaper way is using the school provided locker (Dickens). A middle school student presented this idea of making the shift to a lighter load through a TEDx Talk. Although it is a great idea, a more practical or simple way is to have the child put the books in a locker between classes and utilize what the school already provides. I would be ignorant to say that children using provided iPads during school hours in a math class would not be successful in comparison to children who learned the material without this hand-held device. The way things are now, this very well may be a solution to better understanding math concepts during high-school years but not any earlier. This very experiment took place by a college professor from Liberty University who was tired of receiving students who did not know certain math concepts in their entirety. In one room, high-school students used iPads to aid the learning process, in a room not too far from this one was a room in a traditional setting. In the conclusion of the experiment, Daniel Murphy discovered a 6% increase of substantial understanding in the class that used the technology. Because this side of the story emphasizes the benefits of technology, I want to be sure that you noticed this experiment was taken place in a high-school setting (Murphy). During high school, most students have found their social clicks and understand who they are or who they want to strive to be in the community of students, or at least begin to. By this point in life, the young person has learned enough social skills to where they should not be dependent on social media to be there for them, but instead, hopefully they have made real friends to be there for them.  

To further explain my original claim, experienced teachers have been able to see the indulgence of technology increasing throughout the years in a very notable way. In a 2012 NY Times article, a survey is conducted on if teachers believe that the attention span of students is being hampered due to the use of technology and instant entertainment (Richtel). The results came in with a majority of 64% of educators with experience greater than 10 years noticing a difference (Richtel). Although this survey was very subjective, teachers said they have even found themselves changing their pedagogy to not lose the engagement of the students. Although this article is five years old, it does nothing but exemplify the fact that children’s minds are changing for the worse because technology is much more advanced now than it was five years ago, and adds to its’ credibility because of advancement. People outside of the education department can speculate on this idea of too much tech, but this survey is asking the ones on the front-line of the ‘battle.’ The teachers have the first-hand advantage of seeing the progression of tech and the depreciating of think-tanks. Because of instant entertainment, it has conditioned minds to get more frequently impatient and bored in the school classrooms. Teachers are having to physically change how they teach material to keep the class engaged. It would make the educator’s job much easier if children were focusing every time a teachable moment occurred. The depressing part of this is that we cannot go back. We can only figuratively stop the bleeding. Heed the warning of the teachers in this survey conducted by Matt Richtel.

 To conclude, there is a consensus to be drawn about the use of technology in classrooms, and it is clear. The world is changing in the way that tech is used. All over the world technology is being advanced, shared, created, and implemented by most businesses and in everyday lives. Most of the research I have found will say that the use of technology at an early age has crippled the mind. Younger children who have grown into adults need instant entertainment and books that take longer than ten minutes are not worth diving into. A single organism cannot change the alteration of technology usage and so we must embrace this change and incorporate it into schools at a later age. Students now need tech in the classrooms to be able to have interactions and not get bored during class. We as a nation and as a world have grown a dependency on tech and there is no turning back now. Although there are plenty of downsides of more usage of technology such as declining reading and math scores, and social aspects, using tech is quite helpful if used correctly and moderately. It teaches students to be able to work competitively because a lot of jobs out there require some basic technological skills. Also, it is very practical because online textbooks, in other words, a laptop, is much easier to carry around as opposed to hauling five books weighing ten pounds each.  An important part in implementing this well, is training the educators on how to use these new technologies (Kayalar). How foolish would it be to let an unexperienced educator teach material they are not knowledgeable about? Although the minds of students may be diminished through more usage of technology, it is necessary to implement it into classrooms in high school since jobs are too competitive to not know how to work certain tech. I propose simply that tech at home and tech at school be introduced at a much later age such as the end of middle school or the beginning of high school, and on top of that should be reduced in its usage and implementation. 
