On a typical school day, students are to report to school and be in homeroom by 7:40 a.m. every weekday. If a student were to ever come in late, they are to report to the attendance office, get a tardy slip filled out and go on their way to class. 

After getting to class, it is likely the teacher will instruct the student to either watch what they are doing on the smart board or for them to get their Chromebooks out. Due to being at school, there’s a possibility this will be a common occurrence throughout the day. When students get home after school, said students are most likely going to be back on their Chromebooks to finish any homework and then on his/her personal devices at least until around when they happen to go to bed.  

This constant exposure to technology is the cause of severe damage to not only students, but to their families, friends, jobs and their relationships with teachers or peers at school. 

Regardless of if students are on an electronic device at school, or if they’re trying to cool off at home, being consistently on any sort of device(s) for a long period of time can cause a plethora of changes to one’s character.

One of the major changes that can be noticed is in the behavior of the person. The way the screen makes one physically feel can have a completely different effect on how one feels and portrays emotions. Common differences in behavior are often increased irritability, lack of patience, sudden quietness and much more. 

These acts of behavior can affect relationships through different situations that could happen; however, it is a clear sign that students especially need a break from any technology for a decent amount of time after showing any bouts of anger, sadness or any stress. These behavorial problems can affect the relationships with one’s peers very poorly, the potential of something not so nice being said and someone feeling ignored tends to be very high as when someone is in this sort of state, they’re typically very stressed and acting irrational. 

The students could also feel this way behaviorally because of the way that seeing the content they do on social media and other outlets on technology makes them feel. Pew Research Center performed a study on this in August of 2015. 

“21% of teen social media users report feeling worse about their own life because of what they see from other friends on social media,” Pew Research Center states

This is mostly accidental; however, as most people don’t intend to be acting this way, especially towards their friends, family, teachers and peers. These bouts of emotions can also make one to feel guilty, sad, etc. as it is very common to feel remorse when one is treating the ones that they love and care about differently, especially in a negative way

This is often the result of a greater problem for anyone: obsession. Students will stay up all night and lose much needed sleep to even finish every assignment given to them. Sometimes this is to catch up, stay on task, or even to work ahead. Some even tend to stay up at night to do casual things such as scroll on social media, text or call. 

This can cause even greater effects on a students behavior throughout the school day, as they not only lost sleep from the previous night, but they also stayed up on an electronic device. 

Slowly, all of these occurrences build up, and it’s a consistent behavioral issue that is far from being solved. Then, the sleep schedule is ruined and the student is slowly becoming dependent on technology and everything that it gives them.

Although technology can have effects on a student, their behavior and their relationships, technology can affect a lot more in a students life. 

Students can often see the positive effects of technology too. They see this the most during/after school. Technology teaches students very quick ways to learn loads of content compared to whenever it is being taught through a book or a lecture; however, this is the main cause of why students are dependent on their devices. This is detrimental to a student’s grades, work ethic, and ability to complete class work. This is evident when it becomes time to do a test or read from the book, the student often is unsure of what to do because they’re used to using their Chromebooks for everything. 

This is typically shown through the declining of test scores, which has been proven by the commonwealth foundation. These testing scores have declined in many ways. In this article, the commonwealth states, “The scores show 78 percent of eighth grade students are not proficient in math and 47 percent are not proficient in language arts. This represents a 10 percentage point decline in math and a five percentage point decline in language arts proficiency rates since 2019.”

At times all of this compiled onto one student is what typically can be the cause of the problems forming in the relationships between the student and anyone else around them. It’s stressful and that only adds to the situation.