Booth Id:
BEHA056T
Category:
Behavioral and Social Sciences
Year:
2024
Finalist Names:
Benardot, Cora (School: Franklin Academy High School)
LeRoy, Ellie (School: Franklin Academy High School)
Abstract:
Thousands of high schools across the country are grappling with the issue of cell phone usage and its effect on students’ mental health, and many have implemented bans on cell phone use for their students. This is what our high school decided to do at the beginning of this year in an attempt to battle cyberbullying and combat the possible mental health impacts that this can have on teenagers. The teachers and administrators in our school seemed confident that this ban would have a positive effect on levels of cyberbullying, however the students were not convinced. So, we conducted research within our school to detect whether or not the ban had its intended effect. We sent out an anonymous student survey to students grades 10-12. This ensured that the freshman, who had not been here before the cell phone ban, would not sway our results. We also worked with our vice principal to obtain anonymous discipline reports from both this school year and last school year to determine if the cell phone policy had come with any other major implications. Through these efforts, we found that cyberbullying had not been affected, seeing as a majority of students that had been cyberbullied in the past answered that there was no change in the levels of cyberbullying occurring following the cell phone ban. From a teacher's perspective, the ban is associated with a lowering of misuse of cell phones, a lowering of insubordination, and a lowering of disruption of education.