Lessons to learn over youths’ phone addiction

On a recent Tuesday evening, Tang Yi, a highschool student in Yueyang, Hunan province, was reading a book in his class.

The classroom was quiet because all students were busy doing homework or preparing for a math exam due the next day. High-school students are usually required to take self-instructed classes at night to prepare for the national college entrance examination, or gaokao, the most important exam for them.

Suddenly, Tang’s book began to ring and the whole class looked at him. It turns out he was playing with his smartphone and forget to turn it to silent mode.

Tang had carved a hole in the middle of the book that would fit his smartphone, so he could pretend to read while playing video games.

The Ministry of Education and seven other departments issued a guideline in August to protect students’ eyesight by preventing primary and secondary students bringing in electronic devices, such as smartphones and tablets to classrooms.

Electronic devices that are brought to the school should be handed to teachers for custody, it said.

The guideline also asks teachers not to rely on electronic devices when teaching and giving assignments, and asks them to assign only written homework.

However, smartphones have become such an important part of people’s daily lives that many students not only bring them to school, but also to their bed. It will not be easy for primary and secondary students to hand in their phones to their teachers.

In Tang’s case, the school had issued a notice in 2017 that forbids students playing smartphones in class and asks teachers to keep custody of all phones that are brought to the school.

However, Tang sold his iPhone X at Xianyu, e-commerce giant Alibaba’s flea market platform, and bought two cheaper phones. He handed one phone to the teacher and kept another to himself.

“It is very hard for me to say goodbye to my phone, since I began to own one in third grade. I use it for everything, chatting with friends, playing video games, watching sports and checking the news,” he said.

After racking his brains to think of ways to play his phone without others noticing, he finally began to cut holes into his books. Five books on different subjects have holes for his phone, so he can play it at different classes.

After the incident, Tang’s father was summoned to the school. The teacher and his father gave him a lesson and long talk about the disadvantages of playing smartphones.

But Tang has not been persuaded. “I do think smartphones can help me relax after a long day studying. We need relaxing time to recuperate. All study and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” he said.

However, Tang’s father has taken his phone away.

The proportion of Chinese children under 10 years old who use the internet — which was only 56 percent in 2010 — reached 68 percent in 2017, according to the Bluebook of Teenagers published by the Chinese Academy of Social

Banning smartphones in classrooms is nothing new in China. Even without the regulation from the Ministry of Education and seven other departments, phones have always been banned in most Chinese pri

Sciences last year.

More than 90 percent of Chinese minors, those aged up to 18, can now access the internet through a smartphone and more than 64 percent of primary school kids have their own smartphones, according to the report.

Although some teens use the internet for education, the most popular websites and apps they use are music streaming sites and QQ, a messaging tool developed by Tencent Holdings in 1999. The report also found that almost onethird of school children said they use their smartphones in class and while doing homework.

For Chinese minors, Tencent’s super app WeChat is the main way they obtain news, the Bluebook report found. Nearly 85 percent of Chinese minors use WeChat, compared to only 48 percent in 2012. But Chinese juveniles are still more fond of QQ, while Chinese adults prefer WeChat as a social app, the report said.

Other students have taken a more appreciative attitude towards the government’s move to curb the use of smartphones.

Qu Zihuan, a student at Qingdao Experimental High School, a boarding school in Shandong province, said he handed in his phone voluntarily since the school began to forbid usage in February 2017.

All students hand in their phones to teachers on Monday mornings and they can have them back when they head home on Friday afternoon. Students can borrow teachers’ phones for emergencies, he said.

If students play their phones in classes, they will be criticized in front of the whole school and their parents will be invited to have a discussion with the teachers, Qu said.

“I began to have a phone in fifth grade, so at first it felt weird without it. However, I do feel that I can concentrate on my study better without it,” he said.

“I cannot help but check WeChat messages or go through Weibo when I have a phone by my side, which is a big distraction to study.”

Song Xinyue, also a student at the school, said without her phone, she cannot rely on study apps for answers at school.

“In the past, I just took out my phone and found the answers at the study apps. But now I have to try to figure out the problems by myself or ask other classmates and teachers. It has helped me greatly to learn the questions more clearly.”

“The most important thing for high-school students is to study and get high scores in gaokao, and I am willing to sacrifice a little play time for my dream university.”

Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, said the government has set rules to limit the use of phones because the excessive use of electronic devices has become the main cause of shortsightedness among students.

Although a policy to limit the use of phones in specific places, including the classroom, is welcomed by parents and some students, it is unrealistic to ban schoolchildren from using phones in the digital era, he said.

As for stopping the misuse of smartphones by primary and secondary school students, parents can play a crucial role. They can strengthen supervision of their children and make them aware of the pros and cons of a smartphone, and tell them to use it only for specific purposes, Xiong said.

In addition to limiting the time they can spend online, parents should also warn children that the internet has a lot of sites that contain sex and violence, and so they should never try to access them, he added.

Chu Zhaohui, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Education Sciences, said Chinese parents are increasingly concerned over the misuse and overuse of smartphones by children. Many of them believe the excessive use of such devices from an early age would harm their children’s physical and psychological health.

In fact, an increasing number of schoolchildren are addicted to smartphones and many of them refuse to play outdoor sports or engage in face-to-face conversation, he said.

“I believe school kids get addicted to smartphones mainly because they lack independence. Pushed by parents and teachers, many Chinese students consider being admitted to a good university as the only goal in their life. So after achieving that goal, many of them don’t know what to do and use their spare time on computer games.”

Therefore, to wean the children away from smartphones, we should give them more freedom to decide what they want to do when they grow up. This will make them more aware of the realities of life and help them make informed choices about what they want to do, he added.