Smartphone Satire

Domenic DiSalvo
Dayharsh
EWRT1A
Dawn of the Zone
It isn’t zombies who want to take your brain. It’s cell phones. When you are out, look closely around you. It’s hard to find people without a cell phone in their hands. Ever since the creation of the smartphone, cell phones that can do more than just “phone” have become a must-have for everyone around the world. They are our instant gateway into the internet without needing a big ‘ol computer, and their perfect-for-pockets size makes them even more appealing. Try sticking a laptop in your pocket. With all the greatness that comes from the cell phones, there is a little evil hidden beneath that thin hardened plastic of a shell. They pull your mind from the real world into the world of the Internet,
Sometimes that change is so slow and casual you don’t even notice. You just automatically adapt. A few decades ago, you wouldn’t have thought that Starbucks would become a globally popular coffee place. Now it’s normal to see a Starbucks at the corner of every block. That kind of change is something that requires you to actually pay attention and look, realizing what has become different. There is change that can be found in education, specifically the classroom. My father started taking college classes for fun and for him it was a completely different feeling from when he went to college back in the day. He told me about his adventures in the classes and that, “Everyone else around me is so invested in their phones. Why bother going to class?” People choose entertainment over education, stating that class lectures are boring and lame. Teachers are not there to entertain you, they are there to educate you. I think that’s what surprised my dad the most. How he was the only one in the class who made an effort to care about the subject he was being taught compared to back when everyone in his first college classes were there ready to absorb
We are very much aware of it. But some college students just let their cell phone control them. In 2012, an article was written by Arnold D. Froese along with fellow other authors about surveys and research about students who use cell phones in the classroom, stating that,”Many students admit to using cell phones for social networking purposes in the classroom” (Froese, etc). So if students know that they are distracting themselves, how can they be stopped? It’s not only that, but by getting caught in the cell phone web, they are hindering how well they do in class. The article tells about how an experiment was done in a class to see how well students who were to text during a lecture and that, “Ellis, Daniels, and Jauregui (2010) most directly assessed the effects of texting on performers in a real classroom context…..Experimental students scored significantly lower than control students did on a pop quiz at the end of class. Although this experiment comes directly from a classroom setting, sending a text message to a teacher who does not respond is likely not as distracting as a conversational texting dialogue”(Froese et al. 325). Cell phones are clearly a problem for the future of education. We need a way to fight