Them Damn Phones: Cornellians are Addicted to Screens

And Cornell’s policies don’t help.

Once you start looking, you can’t unsee it: nearly every Cornell student is hopelessly addicted to their phone.

A pedestrian on campus will quickly notice that everyone they pass seems to be holding a phone. Even if they are not in use (and many are), students’ phones seem to perpetually reside in their owners’ hands. The logical conclusion is that each of these phone-bearing pedestrians is teetering on the brink of becoming a distracted walker, subject to the mercy of the next bus.

It isn’t even exclusively solo walkers who are distracted. A visitor to any of Cornell’s gorgeous quads will observe entire groups of pedestrians engaged not with each other, or with their beautiful surroundings, but with their devices.

And it’s not just phones! The culprits include laptops, iPads, and tablets. Sometimes it is possible to witness a feckless pedestrian on multiple devices at once! Besides the obvious dangers that accompany distracted walking, these students have another issue: they can’t get their heads out of the cloud. The iCloud, that is.

Constant internet absorption is a problem in other settings too. Many students complain of endless digital distraction, whether they are eating, sleeping, working or studying. Joey Monson, a senior in ILR, said, “It takes me so long to write an essay. I write a sentence, then look at my phone. Then write another sentence, and look at my phone again.”

A CALS student who wished to be called “Sally,” elaborated, “I find it really distracting especially when I get notifications and feel a need to respond. Whenever I work I turn my phone face down.” When asked why the phone was particularly distracting, she said, “I think it’s the digital aspect. The ability to switch between apps allows me to switch between social media and texting, and is more distracting than another physical object would be.” 

Students aren’t entirely to blame for their obsession. Many societal factors steer students online, and besides, it’s hard to look away! There are numerous studies documenting the distracting nature of smartphones, including their effect on academic performance. One study found that simply carrying a phone had detrimental effects on students’ attention and focus. Another by the London School of Economics found that students had substantially higher grades when phones were banned in their school. Others have established an association between screen time and depression in adults. 

Further, digitalization is encouraged by almost every aspect of the society we live in. Countless channels for participation in communal activities have become accessible only by complicity in the public’s digital addiction. Increasingly, interaction at Cornell is only accessible by living online. Forswearing digital connection, even partly, is to forgo opportunities in education, employment, recreation, entertainment, and even dating. Many activities and institutions are becoming downright hostile to those who wish to limit their screen usage, including Cornell.

It is practically impossible to exist at Cornell without constant online engagement.  Class organization, homework submission, grading and exams are administered on the infamous Canvas page. Many exams and classes are now offered remotely, and some classes don’t even have an in-person option! Registration for clubs and intramurals are also handled digitally, with events often requiring online registration on CampusGroups. 

One specific policy that enforces digital conformity is Cornell’s two-step sign-in process.  This security policy, which forces students to sign into school accounts using the iron-clad shield of… Duo-Mobile…, was fairly unpopular among students at its inception. Student malaise was largely due to the inconvenience of pulling out a separate device. 

However, another deleterious effect of the policy is that it practically mandates that students carry their phones with them, turned on, at all times during the school day, in case they need to sign into their accounts in a pinch. Thus, the two-step policy removes one of the most effective tools of a recovering screen addict: the ability to distance themselves from their phone. 

All this is not to say that online classes and the two-step process are without benefit, or that students should abandon phones and computers and return to paper. But students should be aware of screens’ constant presence, and the effect it has on their lives.

As the generation of the iPhone, today’s students have a responsibility to establish methods of responsible screen use and rebuff nascent digital norms that are overly intrusive. Cornell’s administrators, in their role as educators, should help students in this effort, and take steps to minimize the ramifications of excessive screen usage.

So, the next time you sit down to do some reading online, watch a YouTube video, or flick though Instagram posts, stop yourself. Go outside. Read a book. Anything but that damn phone.

Artwork created by Nial Parmanan ’23.