Some students felt not only distracted by their phones, but morally compromised. Kate: “Having a cell phone has actually affected my personal code of morals and this scares me … I regret to admit that I have texted in class this year, something I swore to myself in high school that I would never do … I am disappointed in myself now that I see how much I have come to depend on technology … I start to wonder if it has affected who I am as a person, and then I remember that it already has.” And James, though he says we must continue to develop our technology, said that “what many people forget is that it is vital for us not to lose our fundamental values along the way.”

Other students were worried that their cell-phone addiction was depriving them of a relationship to the world. Listen to James: “It is almost like the earth stood still and I actually looked around and cared about current events ... This experiment has made many things clear to me and one thing is for sure, I am going to cut back the time I am on my cell phone substantially.”

Selman design

Stewart said he began to see how things “really work” once he was without his phone: “One big thing I picked up on while doing this assignment is how much more engaged I was in the world around me … I noticed that the majority of people were disengaged … There is all this potential for conversation, interaction, and learning from one another but we’re too distracted by the screens … to partake in the real events around us.”

In parentis, loco

Some parents were pleased with their children’s phone-less selves. James said his mother “thought it was great that I did not have my phone because I paid more attention to her while she was talking.” One parent even proposed to join in the experiment.

But for some of the students, phones were a lifeline to their parents. As Karen Fingerman of the University of Texas at Austin wrote in a 2017 article in the journal Innovation in Aging, in the mid to late 20th century, “only half of [American] parents reported contact with a grown child at least once a week.” By contrast, she writes, recent studies find that “nearly all” parents of young adults were in weekly contact with their children, and over half were in daily contact by phone, by text message, or in person.

The city in which these students lived has one of the lowest crime rates in the world and almost no violent crime of any kind, yet they experienced a pervasive, undefined fear.

Emily wrote that without her cell phone, “I felt like I was craving some interaction from a family member. Either to keep my ass in line with the upcoming exams, or to simply let me know someone is supporting me.” Janet admitted, “The most difficult thing was defiantly [sic] not being able to talk to my mom or being able to communicate with anyone on demand or at that present moment. It was extremely stressful for my mom.”

Safety was also a recurrent theme. Janet said, “Having a cell phone makes me feel secure in a way. So having that taken away from me changed my life a little. I was scared that something serious might happen during the week of not having a cell phone.” And she wondered what would have happened “if someone were to attack me or kidnap me or some sort of action along those lines or maybe even if I witnessed a crime take place, or I needed to call an ambulance.”

Selman design

What’s revealing is that this student and others perceived the world to be a very dangerous place. Cell phones were seen as necessary to combat that danger. The city in which these students lived has one of the lowest crime rates in the world and almost no violent crime of any kind, yet they experienced a pervasive, undefined fear.

Live in fragments no longer

My students’ experience of cell phones and the social-media platforms they support may not be exhaustive, or statistically representative. But it is clear that these gadgets made them feel less alive, less connected to other people and to the world, and less productive. They also made many tasks more difficult and encouraged students to act in ways they considered unworthy of themselves. In other words, phones didn’t help them. They harmed them.

I first carried out this exercise in 2014. I repeated it last year in the bigger, more urban institution where I now teach. The occasion this time wasn’t a failed test; it was my despair over the classroom experience in its entirety. I want to be clear here—this is not personal. I have a real fondness for my students as people. But they’re abysmal students; or rather, they aren’t really students at all, at least not in my class. On any given day, 70% of them are sitting before me shopping, texting, completing assignments, watching videos, or otherwise occupying themselves. Even the “good” students do this. No one’s even trying to conceal the activity, the way students did before. This is just what they do.

In their world I’m the distraction, not their phones or their social-media profiles or their networking. Yet for what I’m supposed to be doing—educating and cultivating young hearts and minds—the consequences are pretty dark.

What’s changed? Most of what they wrote in the assignment echoed the papers I’d received in 2014. The phones were compromising their relationships, cutting them off from real things, and distracting them from more important matters. But there were two notable differences. First, for these students, even the simplest activities—getting on the bus or train, ordering dinner, getting up in the morning, even knowing where they were—required their cell phones. As the phone grew more ubiquitous in their lives, their fear of being without it seemed to grow apace. They were jittery, lost, without them.

This may help to explain the second difference: compared with the first batch, this second group displayed a fatalism about phones. Tina’s concluding remarks described it well: “Without cell phones life would be simple and real but we may not be able to cope with the world and our society. After a few days I felt alright without the phone as I got used to it. But I guess it is only fine if it is for a short period of time. One cannot hope to compete efficiently in life without a convenient source of communication that is our phones.” Compare this admission with the reaction of Peter, who a few months after the course in 2014 tossed his smartphone into a river.

I think my students are being entirely rational when they “distract” themselves in my class with their phones. They understand the world they are being prepared to enter much better than I do. In that world, I’m the distraction, not their phones or their social-media profiles or their networking. Yet for what I’m supposed to be doing—educating and cultivating young hearts and minds—the consequences are pretty dark.

Paula was about 28, a little older than most students in the class. She’d returned to college with a real desire to learn after working for almost a decade following high school. I’ll never forget the morning she gave a presentation to a class that was even more alternatively engaged than usual. After it was all over, she looked at me in despair and said, simply: “How in the world do you do this?”

Ron Srigley is a writer who teaches at Humber College and Laurentian University.