Cell phones have made their way onto the list of school supplies for rising third graders. A recent poll by the Personal Finance Education Group (PFEG) says that more than a third of children own a cell phone by the time they are eight years old.
“My sister carries around a broken cell phone,” freshman Meredith Joseph said about 10-year-old Olivia. “She begs my mom for one every day!”
The cell phone craze has skyrocketed in a matter of years, leaving 10-year-old Olivia Joseph jealous of her high-tech classmates. But Joseph is not alone among the kids without cell phones.
“She really wants one,” freshman Dylan Brown said about her little sister, second grader Lily Brown. “One of her friends has one, but second grade is just too young.”
A poll of 10 CHS students, grades 9-12, revealed that 100 percent of them agreed on 6th grade to be the right time for a kid to get a cell phone. Many said that 6th grade is when you start walking home by yourself and having more freedom, so cell phones come in handy.
But not only are cell phones proving to be more popular among the very young, they are also developing into a nuisance that grade school teachers have never had to deal with before.
Cell phone users in elementary school aren’t the majority, but there are enough to cause distractions when texts are sent flying across the room.
Fourth grade teacher Becky Abernathy has had to deal with disciplinary problems regarding inappropriate cell phone usage in her class. Abernathy said that although her class this year doesn’t have that many cell phone users (only about 4 out of the 21 students have cell phones), about half the kids in her class last year had cell phones.
“It’s a popularity contest,” Abernathy said. “And it really increases the amount of gossip.”
Abernathy is among many teachers who are feeling the harmful affect that these cell phones have on the classroom environment.
The increasingly younger ages of cell phone users could also impact their social development, according to a recent study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University. Technology use leads to small but significant increases in loneliness and a decline in overall psychological wellbeing.
So the technology-consumed youth of America not only could negatively impact their classroom discussions, but also their psychological disposition.
Four out of five teens are carriers of wireless devices, and the elementary students are following in their footsteps as the most technologically advanced generation.
Eight-year-olds are now having lemonade stands for ring tones, and doing chores for cool and colorful cell phone cases.