At the annual spring “Repetition of Rules” assembly, MHS students were told to keep cell phones off and away or they would be taken away.
Cell phone usage in classes seems to be at an all time high, with uses ranging from playing a game to checking Twitter or Facebook.

The good news is that we are all very well connected with each other, but at the cost of our own education. One isn’t paying attention to his or her teacher or work when playing around with his or her phone.

“Cell phones serve as an immense distraction that impedes the learning process rather than serve or help it,” social studies teacher Ms. Robbins said.

Students are not only distracted by the use of their phones, but they further miss out on their classes by taking large measures to conceal them from their teachers.

They miss out on their classes and get in trouble all for some insignificant application, text message or Snapchat from a friend.

There are many resources, such as the textbook, that contain the most relevant information, or the many small laptops that the school owns. It is unnecessary to waste the space on your data plan to use your phone to lookup information for a class when the school offers so many free alternatives.

From a safety standpoint, it’s technically not necessary to even have phones in school. Though some may say that the phone is with them just in case they have to contact a parent, they seem to forget that the school has their emergency contact list and many phones to make calls on. There’s even a payphone at MHS for emergencies.

What is the sense in risking getting in trouble to contact someone important when the option of using a school owned phone is on the table?
There’s also a social nuisance to having to compete with an inanimate object for attention from someone. People are buried in their phones, and those phones are glued to their hands, creating a recipe for ignorance. It’s also not unheard of that someone may have walked into a table or an open locker while buried in his or her phone.

It’s not only a nuisance to compete with a phone for someone’s attention, but it is a sign of disrespect from a fellow classmate. It’s always comforting to see that you’re slightly less important than some text message or a high score on 2048. In the end, people always on their phones miss out on the small details that make life so interesting.

Some don’t understand what is so interesting about a text message. Go ahead, keep yourself buried in your phone, but you’re the one missing out (but you’re definitely not missing out on that huge data plan bill).