By Emma Rassi (Y8)
We all know about the phone ban put in place just last year at school, but did it actually impact our lives, or is it just another rule added to the signs around the campus? Well, to figure it out, I sent a survey to years 7, 8 and 9 to find out if it actually affected their daily lives as much as they thought it did, and to be honest, I was somewhat surprised by the results. The survey asked questions like “What is the main reason you use your phone?” and “What year group do you think got most affected?” Thank you so much to anyone who answered the survey; it really helped. I have compiled all of the answers, and here is the summary:
The first question I asked students (after what year they were in) was whether they had a phone, and, unsurprisingly, most did. About 88% of students have a phone, which isn’t as many as I thought. I then asked what they used it for, and I’ll spare you the graph (please only put answers that are useful when answering surveys, since some of you decided to use the response section as your personal chatbox – you know who you are…), but over half of the students said they either use it to message their friends or their parents.
Surprisingly, though, even though most students have a phone, a lot of them said the ban didn’t actually affect them. And on a scale from 1 – 5, the average rating on how much it affected them was about 2.5, which isn’t that much since most of them use their phones regularly.
When I asked them why they felt that way, some of the main arguments for the phone policy were that they didn’t use it at school anyway, they don’t normally bring their phone to school or that they just didn’t have one before the ban, so they never knew life without it. Then I asked them if school life had gotten better or worse because of the ban, and as I expected, most of them said worse, but a good portion of students actually said that life has gotten better or that it hasn’t really changed because we weren’t really allowed to use our phones at school, a lot either way.
The main argument against the ban was that students want to use their phones to message their parents in case they need something or a plan has changed. This is actually a good argument, even though the school has given solutions to these problems, for example, going to reception, but you would look pretty dumb calling your dad from the reception to tell him that you can’t go over to your friend’s house anymore…
One of the most agreed-upon questions I asked was what year group got most affected by the phone ban, and Year 9 won by a landslide.
When the students were asked why they felt that way, most of them said that they were the oldest and probably relied on it more for various reasons, and I agree. I feel like the older you get, the more you need your phone, and so having one becomes more normalised. I’m only in year 8, though, so I can’t say for sure because my year group seems to be the least affected by the phone ban. I’m not certain if I agree or not, but I do see why people would think this, though maybe this is because not a lot of year 8s answered the survey (Do better, guys!)
Finally, to finish off the survey, I asked if they thought the school should change their policy on phones, and I was pretty surprised that just under a quarter of students did not want the school’s policy changed, even when only half of those people actually had phones.
In conclusion, though (as expected) most middle schoolers deeply cherish their phones, some people might just be getting used to the ban…