When you’re at home doing homework or studying for a test, what is the one tool that is always there? No, not a pencil or a notebook. A cell phone. 

But when it comes to class time—put phones away, don’t look at them, think of them or even have them on your desk.

But why is that? In your professional life (which is what school preaches it is preparing you for) you’ll have your phone at your disposal. It’ll be just a couple of inches away from you, yet when you’re in school, it seems worse than the plague. 

Speaking from personal experience, having a phone next to me actually helps me pay attention better. 

Now I’m not saying that I’ll be on my phone the whole class period, but what I am saying is that if a class gets too stressful I can take a minute or two to calm down on my phone and maybe watch a quick Tik Tok or listen to a relaxing song with earbuds so that I don’t distract the lesson at hand. 

Plus, it might be a way for students to get over their “cell phone dependency”. They will no longer feel the need to hide their phone in class. Let’s be honest, the more you tell a teenager not to do something, the more they want to do it. But if you take away that refusal of the cell phone, it could actually help them. 

Another thing school preaches is self-accountability— and what better way to teach that than by allowing students to use their phones in class. Simple, LET THEM USE THEIR PHONES!!!

If you’re on your phone too much, you miss out on class, which then becomes the students’ problem. Especially for students that are about to head into the “real world,” being allowed to use their phones in class would teach them responsibility and self-sufficiency.

Honestly, phones should be allowed in class because not only can they help students de-stress from the multiple hard classes they’re taking, but it can also teach that good-old self-accountability the school likes to prioritize.