When I look at my classmates’ faces, absorbed in their smartphones, they look eerily expressionless, even hollow. Their eyes look tired and droopy; their faces look drained and sulking. They look like they have no choice. It is almost as if they are compelled by some unseen force to use every second of the time limit their parents have set on their devices. I cannot help but think of them as stuck in quicksand. They are not even trying to get out of it! I think my fellow classmates, and most middle school students and teens, are addicted to smartphones. Smartphones have taken over our society. According to 2019 data, 53% of American children own a smartphone by the time they are 11 years old. 84% of teenagers own a smartphone. I have read many news reports in which researchers claim that smartphones can be fun and educational for children and teens and help them socialize with others. As a middle school student who sees the negative impacts of excessive smartphone usage in school, I strongly disagree with these claims. First, excessive smartphone usage causes students to have a distractive personality. The constant buzzing of new messages turns the student’s attention toward the phone and away from the teacher. Students tend to lose their attention easily and cannot focus on what is being taught in class. Even when their phones are not buzzing, their attention seems to be directed toward the phone. Smartphones and other devices are designed to be addictive. For example, in many video games, players are shown their own and their competitors’ scores. Children want to beat other players’ scores. Children may not know this, but their ambition to beat others in the game causes them to keep on playing the game. Sometimes children lose sleep over games, which can be very harmful to their health. Another example of how smartphones are designed to be addictive is the way the apps notify the users when their post has been liked or commented on. It makes children feel pressured to keep on posting more pictures so that people continue to like their pictures. No wonder the children in my school are hooked. Second, smartphones can really hurt children’s mental health. Children can lose self-esteem because of hurtful things on the internet. They can fall behind in their studies and suffer academically. They are so distracted that they are not able to keep up with the work in school, which affects their grades. This can cause them to be depressed. Children who are lonely in school turn to their smartphones to distract themselves or make friends online, but that does not seem to help. When children are on their phones so much, they don’t socialize with people around them. As a result, they have trouble working in teams. They are unable to ask for help when they need it. They are unable to develop healthy relationships with others. This causes them to plunge into their devices even more; the cycle goes on. Parents must take the responsibility for these consequences because they are the ones who choose to give their children smartphones. Some parents think that by setting time limits and parental controls they can control their child(ren)’s phone use. I think this just makes things worse. Students in my school use all the time they have on their smartphones until their time limit goes off. They seem to be waiting for that time in the day when they can use their smartphones; they are the first thing they reach for at lunchtime. This machine seems to immerse them. Sometimes I imagine them turning into a machine. Why do parents give their children smartphones? This question has been haunting me and I think I finally know the answer now. Parents want to have a good relationship with their children, so they give them everything they want to make them happy. Parents may also think that their child is growing up and they deserve to have a smartphone. It is possible that their child is nagging them to have a smartphone because their friends have it. Some parents want their children to be able to communicate with them or contact them. Some others may think that there are many advantages to using smartphones, including playing games, socializing, having fun, and learning. Yet others may think their children are not susceptible to these kinds of behaviors. Others might think the disadvantages are minor. I do not think any of these are good enough reasons to give your child a smartphone because of all the severely negative impacts it can have on a child. In my experience, most children my age do not know how to control their smartphone usage. I only know of one student in my class who has a smartphone but does not bring it to school. At home, she uses it to listen to music while doing homework. I suspect that she is the exception. It breaks my heart to see children not being children, and students not being students. Children are missing social and academic experiences in school. They are getting into patterns of behavior that are hurting them now and will hurt them in the future. I urge parents not to give their children smartphones at such a young age. Give children their childhood back.
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Weekly Creativity #206: Handwrite a Story if You Usually Type, or Type a Story if You Usually Write by Hand
Handwrite a story/poem if you usually type, or type a story/poem if you usually write by hand.
Saturday Newsletter: May 28, 2022
Snip Snip Snip (Fujifilm FinePix XP140) By Astrid Young, 11 (Brookline, MA), published in Stone Soup May 2022 A note from William Dear Friends — Here is a link to the Brady gun control group. I just sent them $100. If not now, when? “Snip, Snip, Snip” is an utterly brilliant photograph. Astrid Young has a photographer’s eye. Look at how she framed the buildings to make the scissor joke more effective. Large pieces of fabric are often cut by placing them on a table and then, as the fabric is cut along a central line, each side, the right and the left, are pushed back at an angle in just the way the building seems to be folded in this photograph. The picture we see here is not obvious when standing on the street. I am sure I would have noticed the scissor, would likely have taken a photograph of it, but I am sure I would not have found the angle that Astrid did that would have made the image memorable. The photographic eye is the the eye that focuses in on a scene to frame it in a way that finds what is interesting. The difference between a “snapshot” and a “photograph” is intentionality. Astrid didn’t just snap this picture. She thought about what she was doing. In this weekend project, I am going to ask you to use your phone or camera to frame an image to highlight something you find in the scene that interests you. Something that you might want others to notice. Astrid’s photograph is “about” many things. There is the scissor joke, but there is a lot more. This photograph is also an exploration of light and dark. Note how the left-hand side of the building is in shadow while the right-hand side is in sun light. Note how the pole also has a bright white right side and a left side dulled by shadow. There are white window reflections in windows on both sides of the building, with an additional pattern of the white getting smaller in the windows on the left side of the building, windows that seem to melt into total darkness. The scissors are glaring white as is the right side of the pole. This photograph also has very strong lines. The pole. The stone work on the right-hand side of the building. The window ledges. In your mind’s eye draw lines that follow the various lines you can find in the photograph. A lot going on! Sometime today or tomorrow, I’d like you to pick up your phone, or a camera, and working in your house or outside, I’d like you to play with framing. Take four to 12 pictures of the same thing, experimenting with camera angles to highlight patterns in what you are looking at. Your camera angles don’t need to be as extreme as Astrid’s. Sometimes, just a slight shift in framing does the trick. As always, if what you come up with is something you like a lot, then please submit it to Stone Soup for possible publication. Connor Kiggins, 12 (New York, NY) From Stone Soup May 2022 American Monarchy By Connor Kiggins, 12 (New York, NY) Every day upon waking up, I wish that the burden of school had never been thrust upon my tired back as I cannot keep up with addition, subtraction, fractions, and historic factions while strangers observe my every action five days a week, eight hours a day, our only vacation being one based around letting kids out to start working on their parents’ farms during the harvest season. And that tradition only stays so that we kids can have a mental break from school although soon we will go back and have our schedule wiped clear, making me want to break out and go have fun before I’m buried underground with a sign above saying rest in peace. And we are not even free three days a week, a freedom I think we deserve as many seem to forget that one day we will grow up and work maybe twice as hard as you and of course, let’s not forget that when you grow old, who else but your sons and daughters will in turn take care of you and yet one thing we won’t do is take your freedom like you take ours. And still we will fight for you even though you dump us in school as the people who are often referred to as “America’s future” find themselves in a government-required American monarchy, where the teachers act like dukes, the deans like princes, and the principal the all-powerful king, while we the future are insignificant peasants stuck in the king’s castle while being told we have to follow all his rules, while we toil in a classroom, making our humor and passion slowly dissipate as we learn about but do not obey the rules of freedom of speech and democracy while being instructed on everything from how to breathe and when we can go pee and not to put our heads on the table and being scolded for doing it twice by a hypocritical math teacher, and when I go to the graded class of musical theater he tells us that we cannot even go to the bathroom unless we are about to wet our pants, and that just so he doesn’t get scolded by our parents for putting their children in an embarrassing position in front of the class—making me feel that this American monarchy has gone too far and is going to keep on destroying our future, even though they already have by filling the sky with toxic gasses—all so they could get a fancy pen and with a few strokes decide whether we will go to college and be successful or end up in a small apartment while working at McDonald’s, all because the American monarchy said we weren’t smart enough to go to even the worst college, which is why at the end of
