Cell phone addiction is a growing issue portrayed to affect mostly teens everywhere. Although, Time Magazine found that 84 percent of adults failed to go an entire day without their phones. Walk the halls of any school or enter a classroom and you will find thousands of kids on their cellphones. According to CNN, 50 percent of teens have admitted to being addicted to their cell phones. “Yes, I will honestly admit that I am addicted to my phone and that I cannot go without it,” sophomore Jae Song said. “I need it to keep me updated on various things that I wouldn’t usually be able to see without my device.” 

Addiction can become a part of your daily routine, gradually it will come to be very difficult to get rid of. As stated by the National Center for Education Statistics, on average only 42 percent of students complete their homework on time, while 72 percent of teens feel the need to immediately respond to texts, social networking messages, and other notifications. “I no longer have a cell phone because I had gotten really bad grades for the third grading period,” freshman Isabella Ellingsworth said. “I worried about my social life more than my grades and it had a huge impact on me.” According to the NCBI, this issue can affect your stress levels if you’re constantly checking your device. It can also lead to insomnia, anxiety and depression.

Parents play a huge role when it comes to their child’s cell phone addiction. CNN stated that 66 percent of parents are concerned with the amount of time their children spend on their phones and 36 percent of parents feel they argue with their child on a daily basis about their device use. Parental restrictions are made available for every carrier but many aren’t informed enough about the additional services. For example, AT&T has a service called Smart Limits, where you can adjust your child’s data usage, and prevent them from staying on it constantly by regulating the amount of time the spend on their phone. “My parents and I argue a lot every night about my cell phone,” freshman Keturah Adair said. “They think I spend way too much time on it, so they set a time for it to automatically shut off and my dad takes it every night, so I can get some sleep.”