Essay Sample: Should Kids Have Cell Phones?

For my (own) part, I would do anything to prevent my ten-year-old cousins from having trouble with both learning and health issues. Who would want their kid having problems growing up, preparing to be an adult? Parents should prevent kids aged 5-11 years old from owning smartphones since it inhibits students from learning and harms their health.

When the child is allowed to carry a phone, it hinders the student’s education. First, students with phones in class will cause distraction. Phones will easily distract young people from their studies. When a student is bored with a class, it does not take much effort to pull out their phone and check social media or play games. So how is it possible for them to grab the knowledge they learned when they are not even paying attention? According to a 2010 study from Pew Research Center, 64% of students with cell phones have texted in class, and also 25% have made or received a phone call during class time. Based on the report, more than half of the students do not pay attention in class and instead spend their time on their phones. Not only that, but receiving or making phone calls during the lectures can prevent students from learning and their classmates. Next, students will use phones as a tool for cheating. There are many ways students use phones to cheat. One way is texting in class and outside of class. Students will send discreetly text messages that have information about the class test. Taking it one step further, the students excuse themselves to go to the washroom, only use that time to send text messages about important questions. As technology is growing and improving quicker, students will use phones to search the internet by simply photographing a question when the instructor is engaged in something else. I have used these two methods, but as the finals are coming up, I flunk it with a horrendous score, and of course, the testing room restricted phones. A good deal may ask, “How does cheating cause this?” Academic dishonesty has some effects, especially among individuals who start cheating in the first year of education. It interferes with the fundamental mission of education, and it helps the student get by without mastering the knowledge. As this goes on in elementary school and getting into middle school, they will fail schools since they have lost the foundation of knowledge they needed in elementary. Finally, students will commit illegal activities from having ownership of phones. One crime currently in action is illicit pictures on the internet.

Students are taking photos or videos that they should not be taking. These cell phones have built-in digital cameras, and it becomes too easy to take a picture of someone without the person noticing. Theft is another crime in the act. According to Consumer Reports, cell phone theft is a problem in America, with 3.1 million cell phones stolen in 2013. Especially if the phone is expensive, thieves will target the child, planning to steal the phone. Based on those two illegal activities caused by students, they will have the punishment of getting expelled. From that, they will have a hard time applying to a terrific school since no school would want their reputation to go down. They will have to be in a school with a low-quality of education. Those schools lack qualified teachers, inadequate teaching materials, and poor sanitation, which will give the student a hard time learning. Some may say that having a phone would be a helpful tool in education. Research has shown that students are misusing their phones, causing them to have a low academic performance. Parents should not let their children carry a phone for these reasons since it makes it difficult for them to learn.

When children are engaged with phones, there is no doubt it will negatively affect their health. First, interaction with phones will harm the child’s brain development process. We use phones as a source of information. As a result, people do not work hard to get them anymore. For example, students use textbooks to get information, and since the written text is complicated, students will need to think to understand the information. Now, all it needs for phones is to take a picture and immediately have the information available in simple terms. If somebody overly depends on this external support, it might lead to mental laziness.

Since this is about kids aged 5-to 13, their brain is developing. Of course, having mental laziness will create obstacles during their brain development. Also, the lights from cell phones will affect the child’s brain. According to Block Blue Light, a child constantly exposed to blue light caused by phones, especially at night, will confuse the brain and disrupt our natural body clock. As the natural light fades in the evening, it signals the brain to produce a melatonin hormone to prepare the child to fall asleep and stay asleep. If the child is exposed to high levels of blue light at night, it stops producing melatonin, and the brain thinks it is still daytime. Without sleep, the brain cannot function correctly. Since the brain does not have time to recover, the child’s neurons are overworked and less capable of optimal performance in various thinking tasks. Next, interaction with phones will cause eye damage. A phone is a small device with tiny text, causing the child to squint when reading a particular text. They might not mind reading small text on the smartphone screen, but their eyes sure do. According to BenQ, when youngsters are concentrated on a text for an extended duration, their ciliary muscle contracts and spasms. The muscles around their eyes become packed and stiff, preventing the eyes from adjusting appropriately. For the eye to view words clearly, the ciliary muscle must spend effort escalating eye strain, which later causes blurred vision. Also, the child will gaze at a phone screen, reducing the number of times a person blinks, resulting in dry eyes. Blinking helps redistribute moisture and keeps them from getting dry.

Each person should blink about 15 times per minute, and that number goes down by half when one stares at a smartphone, giving the eyes much less time to recover. According to the Mayo Clinic, people who have dry eyes experience complications like having damage to the eye’s surface, which, if left untreated, will lead to eye inflammation, vision loss, and more. Dry eyes also make an individual have a hard time performing everyday activities like reading. Many parents would not want their children to experience these issues during their growing stages. Finally, children will experience mental illness from using phones. There are many ways that the phone causes mental issues. One of them is from using social media. From that, the comparison is the factor that makes people experience problems. As we scroll through the latest post from our friends, we fall into comparing ourselves to others. Although the comparison can be positive or negative, both types will make people feel awful. The result is surprising since, in real life, only when people are better than us make us feel terrible.

Well, I also experienced this myself throughout my elementary school life. It was a game that I was good at, working hard on that game to be the best. Though, as I scrolled through Reddit on my phone at the end of each session of training that game. People were achieving higher scores and higher popularity. As I saw these posts, thinking to myself, “Why can’t I be them? Why can’t I be better?” This went on for months, and I stopped socializing with my friends and later suffered from depression. Therefore, owning a phone at a young age will cause mental health issues. Much may argue that having a phone does not affect an individual’s health. However, surveys have shown that there is rarely any parental protection on the child’s phone, which leads to overuse of technology, causing physical and mental health issues. Clearly, letting children have a phone will harm their health.

Children restricted to phones have received better academic performance and health conditions. Why wait? Follow the parent who has been living stress-free and prohibits children from owning a phone.