Newly introduced Digital Detox Day, led by Technology Integration Coordinator Leah Lynn, has been brought to the Upper School and will happen tomorrow, Friday the 27th. There will be two more days on April 25th and May 2nd. The entire basis of the detox is so the students can be free of the their screens and can be fully present the whole day. Students can wear free dress to school as a reward for turning their phones in for the day once they get to school. Students who do not, have to wear uniforms. Another plot twist is students who do participate cannot leave campus the whole day because it is seen as a safety concern to be off campus without access to a phone. This will be a challenge for upperclassmen seeing as they have multiple frees and the ability to drive.
On the actual day of the detox, only a handful of students in each grade participated. Sophomore Nora Knaak, and her friend group, decided to put up their phones for the day.
“All of my friends did it, and we have more fun without our phones,” Knaak said. “We’ve been hanging out and talking all day, and playing games in our free time, like Uno.”
Students who took part in the day seemed to enjoy it, but was it truly a digital detox? Majority of the students who did, still were working on their computers throughout the day and some even brought their iPads for a more portable screen time option. Students who did not participate were still having fun, just with a phone in their hand.
I personally think a detox like that is kind of ironic, seeing as we are an Apple Distinguished School, and we use computers everyday for class. Sure, eliminating phone usage isn’t a bad thing, but its contradictory when you ask those same students to use their computers for every assignment. You are not detoxing.
And as teenagers, we are constantly being told that we are addicted to our phones or that we use them too much. However, when we finally put it down, our moms and dads freak out about us not answering them. The iPhone has been pushed down everyone’s throats for years. With the draw of getting the newest one with the coolest features, you cannot live in this day and age, and not use a cellphone. Paradoxically, when use them and feed into the draw of getting the newest and best, the world tells us to put them down and come back to reality. I feel like it is one big scheme.
The digital detox days at school could be positive if students truly detoxed, not just halfway. If they did not only turn in their phones, but teachers redirected their lessons from the computer to physical paper, then and only then would it be successful.