Smart Phone High School Horror Stories.
Teaching against the smartphone on the frontline.
Here are three short stories from my teaching career. They all involve instructing teenagers addicted to their smartphones. Enjoy.
WORLD STARRR!!!
Ohhhh shit. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit.
I thought to myself as I hurried to the other side of the gymnasium. Two girls had been sniping comments at each other all class, and it looked like we had finally reached the point where the volcano was about to blow.
All the kids in class turned their heads toward the verbal abuse and started hurrying towards the two girls. They were all thinking what I was thinking.
There’s gonna be a fight.
As the two girls hurled insults at each other I stood between them with my arms outstretched, like I was trying to push them apart with the force. “C’mon guys, please stop,” I said. Even to my ears it sounded like whining. The girls kept their verbal abuse flying as they both tried to maneuver around me.
By this time the entire class had formed a circle around us and were egging on the two girls. Then one kid took out his phone and started recording. That pissed me off. I said, “Hey! HEY! PUT THAT PHONE AWAY!”
It was too late to realize my mistake. While I had directed my attention to the kid with the phone, the two girls closed and started viciously trying to rip each other's hair out while dealing brutal blows to each other's face. Suddenly all the kids had their phones out recording, and everyone was screaming “WORLD STARRRR!!!” in hopes that their video would be the one to go viral on WorldStarHipHop.com, a website famous for hosting street fight videos.
I proceeded to do the dumbest thing a teacher can do at a time like this. I stepped into the middle of the fight and tried to break it up. One kid screamed into his phone, “OHHHH SHIT DA TEACHER IN THERE NOW!”
I managed to separate them for a moment and I proceeded to bear hug one, pick her up, and march away with her toward the exit. What I didn’t count on was the other girl continuing to swing at the girl even though I had her immobilized. While I was walking away she kept throwing punches over my back shoulder. The other girl desperately flailed her fists over my head trying to hit back. Eventually, the girl behind me clocked me right in the ear. Realizing I made a rookie error not calling security before I tried to break up the fight, I let the other girl drop to the floor so I could get to the phone.
While the two girls got back to the business of trying to murder each other, I stalked away to make the call in disgust. Not a single kid had tried to step in and stop the fight. Everyone had their phone out, screaming at the contestants or providing video commentary, drunk on the idea that they might be the ones to post a viral hit. I’m sure every phone camera in the room only fueled the girls to fight even harder.
It was like watching cheap dopamine destroy humanity.
Comatose
He kind of looked like a dead body.
If it weren’t for his half lidded eyes and his single pointer finger sliding his screen up and up and up, endlessly up, I never would have known he was alive.
He was sprawled on the gymnasium floor. It wasn’t as if the hard laminated wood was comfortable. He was supposed to be playing basketball, a game he supposedly loved. Instead, he was dead to the world, with the exception of a two by four inch pixel lit screen.
“Hey Chris.”
No response.
“Hey Chris,” I say a bit louder.
Still no response.
“CHRIS.” I nudge him with my foot this time.
He said in complete monotone, “Mmmmwhat?”
“You know you need to participate in order to get a grade in this class right?”
“Mmmm,” his finger flicked the screen up.
“You know you’ve got to pass this class in order to graduate right?”
“Mmmm,” his finger continued its monotonous movement.
I crouched down to get closer to his level, “dude, I know you don’t want to get stuck in a school with no windows for another year. C’mon. All you gotta do is play.”
He didn’t make his zombie “mmm” sound this time. His finger paused for about three seconds as his half-lidded eyes glanced at me. I thought he might be about to get up, or at least say some intelligible words to me, but then a TikTok influencer said something that caught his attention, and his dead eyes slid back to the screen. His finger started sliding the screen up again. A faint smile came to his lips.
I sighed, stood up, and went to my office to write the kid up. I pass heroin addicts on the street every day on my way to school. I knew the kid was only on his phone, but at that moment, I was struggling to tell the difference.
Control
Agree or Disagree with the following statement: I am in control of my phone. My phone is not in control of me.
Think, Pair, Share
In three sentences or more write down whether you agree or disagree in your notebook - be sure to explain WHY.
Take two minutes to share with a partner.
Be prepared to share your answers with the group.
That was the opening exercise I had up on my PowerPoint for a lesson I was teaching on tech addiction. The students replied predictably.
“Yo, this is a dumb question. Of course I’m in control. Watch,” Dante picked up his phone, showed everyone the screen, turned it on, then turned it off. “See? That’s control.”
“Okay, fair. You have the ability to turn it off whenever you want to. But do you ever feel like you just keep scrolling - especially when you have other things that you need to do? Homework for instance?” I said.
“Nah Schuerch, I do whatever I want to do. And that’s a fact.”
I vaguely reflected on the suspension he recently served for cursing a teacher out in the hallway. The kid wasn’t lying about his world view. Didn’t do much to help my lesson though. I went around the room, getting each student's point of view on the matter.
Unfortunately, Dante had set the tone. No teenager was interested in entertaining the thought that they weren’t the masters of their universe. Most answers were copycat versions of Dante’s. I choose when I look at my phone, I like my phone, fuck off with these questions mista.
Then I got to Manuella. This is a student who had once casually told me she spent 17 hours on her phone on a Sunday while we were doing a screen time check. She was also in a grade point battle to become valedictorian of the school. (She eventually became salutatorian.)
She said, “I want to say that I’m in control…” She paused and looked around the room a bit nervously, “but lately I’m not so sure if that’s the case.”
My ears perked up, “Oh yeah? Why do you say that Manuella?”
“Well, yesterday I was taking a shower, and I like to listen to music through my phone. I keep it on the bathroom counter next to the shower. While I washing, I heard my phone vibrate. Before I even acknowledged what I was doing, my hand shot out of the shower and grabbed my phone to check it. I got water and soap all over my phone.”
I arched one of my eyebrows at that one, “Woah. Why do you think you did that?”
“I guess I’m so used to checking my phone when it vibrates…”
I took a shot in the dark and addressed the class, “Hey everybody, have you ever been in a situation where you’ve suddenly opened your phone and clicked on social media, without even thinking about why you did it?” I was remembering my own behaviors driving home in my car. I get to a red light, suddenly my phone is in my hand, zero forethought as to why it was even there.”
A bunch of the kids started slowly nodding.
Dante said, “Yeah actually. Sometimes I just have it open. Even after I close it, sometimes my thumb just goes right back to opening it. Why is that?
It seems Dante had forgot his former statement.
I said, “Well, have you guys ever heard of Pavlov’s dogs?”
“...Nah. What’s that?”
*4 years ago, I read Kevin Kelly’s article, “1000 True Fans.” The gist of it goes like this. Create a following of people who become fans of what you do. Be so damn good at what you do that people want to give you money so you continue doing it.
Here’s what I do. I teach, and I write stories about it.
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Fortunately, we don’t have it quite this bad in elementary school… yet. But I’m not optimistic about the future even with our little ones. Too many struggle with addiction to school-provided devices such as IPads. Tantrums and disruption follow any request to put the device away and transition to other work. It slows learning and increases dangerous dependency on entertaining instruction. I limit tech access in my classroom using it only when required. My daydreams imagine sullen and anxious tech executives sitting shamefully before congressional committees as they try to justify their years of psychological manipulation creating generations of addicted and profitable lifelong consumers. I’d like to believe they’ll share the social stigma of their kindred spirits in the tobacco industry, but I’m not very hopeful.
I love reading your work! I just subscribed, but your teaching method are great! The first story was comical, but it gets worse as it goes on. I guess we never really think about phones as an "addiction" until it gets so bad we just have to.