Briarcliff Sixth Graders Learn About Cell Phone Addiction

Press release from the Briarcliff Manor Union Free School District:

Middle school is a time when many students get their first cell phone but with that step comes great responsibility. Recently, sixth-graders in Teka McCabe’s Media Literacy class at Briarcliff Middle School learned about cell phone addiction.

Cell phone addiction is a real thing for students in middle and high school. If students know how they can get hooked, the better chance they have to not get hooked on their phones. In class, students learned some of the “tricks” phone and social media companies employ to get users “hooked” on their phones and devices.

One tactic is the “endless scroll.” With other forms of media, users get to a natural break, for example - at the end of a chapter or the end of an episode on television. Social media users, however, never get to the end of the page. “They just keep scrolling for hours and not even realizing it,” Ms. McCabe said. “The hit of dopamine our brains give us as a reward when we refresh the page for new content or get “likes” for our posts also keeps us coming back for more.”

According to Ms. McCabe, who is Library Media Specialist at both the middle and high schools, the bright red alerts to tell us that we have new messages or other new content make it seem like the new content is urgent and draws us in.

“Turning our phones to grayscale rather than color makes those alerts less attractive and urgent-seeming,” Ms. McCabe said. “Another option is to put a timer on your phone so you are given an alert to stop and do something else.”

To share their learning with the rest of the school community, students created videos with information to fight phone addiction and digital drama and hung posters around the school with some of that advice with QR codes linking to their videos.

“The students did such a great job on their videos,” Ms. McCabe said, “I hope the students and staff look at those videos to be more informed about phone safety.”

This press release was produced by the Briarcliff Manor Union Free School District. The views expressed here are the author’s own.