Negative Impacts of Smartphones in Learning Essay Example

Intensification of technological encroachment in the contemporary world has had great impacts on social, economic and political grounds. We are living in a world where skipping a meal is better than losing the phone. Precisely, it is vibrant that smart technology is controlling how activities are done. The effect has manifested itself in situations where mobile phones are used as learning gadgets. However, there is a deliberation on whether mobile learning strategy is allied with positive results or much glued to negative repercussions. This question has remained rhetoric to many people, some arguing on the facet supporting the use of mobile phone while others are arguing that mobile phones usage in learning institutions should be abolished (Kibona et al., 2015).

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Those against mobile phones in learning claim that mobile phone has an essence of poor performance. The supporters argue that mobile phones in learning are effective in the learning process since it is a faster method of instilling knowledge to the students. This paper will explore the negative impacts of mobile phones on learning whilst providing an effective solution to the same.

Undoubtedly, smartphones have had negative effects both to the teachers and students. Cyberloafing among the teacher is rampant and correlated with negative impacts to the learning. Poor performance in learning institutions is allied with the escalated use of smartphones in the process of acquiring and imparting knowledge. Every instructor has a smartphone directly used for communication purposes or other personal stuff. Use of the smartphones by the teachers has been extended to the learning process. Job environment has been adversely affected by mobile phone usage wherein most of the teaching spend most of the time browsing and chatting hence leaving little time for service delivery (Samaha & Hawi, 2016).

Disruption arising from the phone calls during the teaching process affects the learning process. Think of situations where your teacher is in class and then phone calls, subsequently relate the situation to the learning mood. As a student, will you be affected negatively or positively? Of course, the disruption negatively affects students teaching flow and he she may show less concern for the continuation of the next step. This will affect the performance of the student at large. Generally, the overall teaching service delivery for the teachers to the students is negatively affected as teachers tend to focus more on smartphone forgetting their normal duties. Very few will relate smartphones with positive results in learning as the negative impacts outweigh the positives results.

Moreover, students' performance is profoundly negatively affected by smartphone usage in learning institutions. Escalated focus on smartphones is deterring students from achieving their goals and objectives. Social media activities are rampant among higher education students, and therefore, they tend to spend most of their time on either Facebook, Twitter or YouTube spending less time on their studies and assignments.

Research has revealed that students spend more than 12 hours on their phones whole the little five to six hours are left learning purposes (Anshari et al., 2017). Academic performance is proportionally related to devotion and serious in academics. Justification of the information is derived from the fact that student who is more glued to their smartphones show low performance while those who focus less on smartphones show a positive and higher performance.

Concisely, smartphones have negative impacts on students who lack personal control over their usage. Time wasted is never recovered. It is an ongoing saying that needs to be evaluated in all dimensions in the process of learning (Hawi & Samaha, 2016). Use of smartphones and time wastage works both to the teachers and the students. The ultimate result is the poor performance depicting the negative impacts of smartphones even though it also positively affects studies through research and online studies.

There is a lack of inaccurate information alleged from the use of mobile phones during studies. This has been shown in one of the concurrent research following the impact of mobile phones in schools where mobile phones have been reported having a great impact on learning through distraction which has allegedly resulted to low-performance issues.

In supposition to the low-performance issue, the research has shown that most of the students who use mobile phones in schools are unable to recall the information which they have been taught by their teachers accurately as compared to the students who do not use mobile phones in schools (Anshari et al., 2017). These results from the incapability of relating the useful content where the students with mobile phones tend to use the phones for the sake of entertainment and viewing of irrelevant information which is unusual as required by the syllabus in schools.

Vibrantly, the information acquired from mobile phones is most of the time corrupted and of parental explicit where the students are not bound to view or get the information from them (Shuib et al., 2015). This kind of information is acquired from accessible sites like porn hubs which in turn give the students the ability to view them without considering them as explicit parental materials to find out that they have wasted a lot of time viewing the irrelevant information instead of using that time for serious studies.

Considerably, an interview which was recently conducted in a high school has a population of 638 students on the perception of mobile phone use in school, revealed that not only were the majority of them using mobile phones in schools but also their views as a group was largely discrepant. Even though 70 percent of the students termed use of mobile phones as a motivational way of learning, increased engagement as well productivity and creativity, the reality is that the use of mobile phones is a great factor in student's failure (Hawi & Samaha, 2016). In accordance with the interview, a third of the cohorts reported concerns on the mobile phones to use as a disruption, misuse of mobile phones, especially under exam conditions. Rewardingly, the use of mobile phones in schools is highly alleged to harmful and criminal activities such as cyberbullying and sexting according to the interview.

The use of mobile phones in schools holds a big issue in the failure of the school due to underperformance by the students. This problem is mainly brought by the issue of the technological advancements in the sector of Social Media. It is vibrant that most of the students at the current generation are holding a great influence from the information that they acquire from the Social Media. This issue has promptly moved from being applied in the outside of the school life to be used by applied by the students who are now referring themselves as the right generation for living the lives they want.

The information copied from the Social Media includes wearing of half-naked attires, majestic walking styles and other flattering ways which have been a most prevalent issue especially to the girls (Anshari et al., 2017). Such kind of behaviors ends up making the students focus on social life more than embarking on the studies that finally leads to exam failure. Moreover, such behavior of following social media trends and other misleading contents which are out of the age of the students leads to school dropouts and unwanted pregnancies because of social media influence, especially to the girls.

Students are much glued to playing games a lot, and when mobile phones are allowed into lecture halls, instead of concentrating to their teachers they will start playing games which will distract their concentration on what their teacher is teaching them. Additionally, gaming will have a negative effect on their exams performance for they failed to acquire the basic education which may lead to a lack of the required knowledge to answer questions (Kibona et al., 2015). The students being involved in playing games inside classroom they may be suspended from the school leading to their poor performance in examinations and may lead to addiction which may account for the students to attend rehab and missing classes

Students tend to communicate and talk to their friends during classes if they feel bored or just for fun. However, texting with friends can lead to poor performance for it distracts the student's attention from the teaching to the texting which may lead to the poor performing of the students during examinations (Hawi & Samaha, 2016). However, this might may lead the student being suspended from the school because of academic environment distraction through friend chatting and texting friends as well as distracting other students from paying attention to the teachers. It is not ethical to students and the teachers.

Smartphones may be used by students during exams with the aim of answering the questions being asked instead of using their knowledge to answer the questions. The students may lie to themselves that they are bright, or they understand better than other students when they perform so well than their expectation (Anshari et al., 2017). Additionally, this has far-reaching consequences because they become depended on the smartphone internet to answer every question asked of them leading students to lack a competitive nature and the courage which can be applied during exam time.

The major effect of smartphones is addiction or being attached to mobile phones through over dependency on the smartphone to carry out a transaction, research and for entertainment. Mobile phones enable students to stay connected to other students, parents, and friends which may lead to addiction since they often use their phones to stay in contact (Kibona et al., 2015). However, smartphone addiction is a threatening issue which needs important study. Smartphone addiction to students makes them not able to work without their mobile phones with them to check texts, social media, and play games among other things.

Concurrently, when attending lectures, mobile phones seem to distract students from paying attention to teachers to understand what they are teaching them. Instead, they find themselves browsing their smartphones even without their notice. Furthermore, many students are addicted to their smartphone to the extent that they can be suspended from school because of their consistent use of mobile phone in class distracting other students instead of concentrating to the teacher to acquire knowledge.

Students use internet information to answer questions asked by their teachers. This strategy entails students acquiring information from the internet in answering the assignment questions. . In most cases, this may force the students to fail in their exams since they have acquired their own version of the answers needed.

However, disinformation and fake news obtained from the smartphone is another core problem affecting learning institutions. It has the essence of making students lazy and not focus on consulting their books to determine whether the information acquired is correct or not. Smartphones have internet access can one read information from the internet for further understanding and research for their studies (Anshari et al., 2017). Thus, the information retrieved from the internet may be different from the one given by their teachers in notes form leading to a state of confusion for the students hence failing to understand what needs to be done in approaching the question.

Conclusion

In conclusion, smartphones are allied with po...