Mill Valley News: Did turning off your phone improve your focus at school?

Hailey Perrin: During my day to day life my screen time reached nearly six hours each day previous to this experiment.
As far as focus goes during the first half of my first block, English, no. I was almost more distracted thinking about all the things I could be missing on my phone. However eventually it leveled and by second block psychology class I had almost completely forgotten about not checking my phone.

MVN: How did you feel throughout the day without your phone?

HP: Forcing myself to not check my phone or even touch it gave me more anxiety than I have on a general school day. I was scared that I would miss something important or be left out about some local or social news. Uneasy and hyper was another thing I noticed rising in levels. I was getting bored quickly and almost felt like I needed to multitask but I wasn’t sure how to without my phone.

MVN: What benefits and drawbacks did you notice during the day?

HP: As far as benefits go I was able to read over a hundred pages of a book which I had been struggling to force myself to read for a while now. As far as my actual academic day, once I was able to use my laptop for music my focus went through the roof and I got all my assignments done for the week. However I did notice that I was behind on conversations my friends were having which left me feeling left out and confused.