Smartphone Addiction on Academic Performance & Mental Health
For many years, the evolution of the smartphone has been remarkable. Everywhere you go, you’ll see at least one person looking down at their smartphone. These devices are used greatly in school, which has positive and negative effects to the students learning. Many students use smartphones negatively, like using them as a distraction or not for school purposes. This type of addiction can lead to a lower academic performance and develop mental health problems. Art can help bring awareness to the issue of mental illness and academic performance that is caused by smartphones.
I personally believe that art can help students with mental health issues, like stress. I read an article that was called, “To excel or not to excel: Strong evidence on the adverse effect of smartphone addiction on academic performance” by Nazir S. Hawi and Maya Samaha. They talked about how students from many universities may have a high risk of smartphone addiction. Students are less likely to achieve high GPAs. I think many students depend on their phones to cope with stress, anxiety, depression, and much more. Smartphone addiction has been increasing for years, since we have the device on the palm of our hands. In the article “Necessary Edges” by Yo-Yo Ma, a songwriter and cellist who talks about how art is needed in the public school system. He goes to explain how the STEM curriculum isn’t giving our children a well rounded education and proposes the idea that art needs to be added to the curriculum. It would benefit to students to make it a STEAM curriculum. I think it would benefit the students because it sharpens creative thinking. Along with helping them achieve more successfully in other basic subjects. Yo-Yo Ma states “Damasio instead makes the compelling argument, empirically based in neurology, that feeling and emotions as expressed in art and music play a central role in high-level cognitive reasoning.” By this, I think art can be some type of escape from reality, kind of corresponding to a hobby. I agree with quote because I use music to cope when I’m stressed or to simply have a good time with my friends or alone. By personal experience, music has helped me to calm down in stressful situtations. This refers back to the smartphone addiction article. People use their phone as an excuse to not pay attention in school which has a negative impact on the individual. This quote from Samaha and Hawi’s article claims, “Other studies conducted in South Korea and Lebanon showed that those who have lower self-control and those who have greater stress were more likely to be addicted to smartphones. Whether a cause or an effect, smartphone addiction is detrimental to productivity in general and learning in particular.” School causes a lot of stress on students. Instead of relying on a smartphone to get away from academics, art is a positive way for students to give their brain a break from actual school work. I think art will help the students with developing high levels of creativity.
I also believe that art can improve academic performance. The second article we read in class was “The Future of Science…Is Art?” by Jonah Lehrer. He talks about how science and art can influence one another. Jonah states, “My answer is simple: Science needs the arts. We need to find a place for the artist within the experimental process, to rediscover what Bohr observed when he looked at those cubist paintings… Rather, it is a practical problem, and it holds back science’s theories. If we want answers to our most essential questions, then we will need to bridge our cultural divide. By heeding the wisdom of the arts, science can gain the kinds of new insights and perspectives that are the seeds of scientific progress.” This means art can help scientists and citizens understand science in a new point of view, which could lead to answers in the science world. I think this could relate to art and a student’s academic performance because art can teach new ways of thinking, along with discovering new ways to help manage school work. The comparison here is art and education; students need art to have a greater success. I think art can improve academic performance because it can solve many problems in school. Nazir and Samaha stated, “However, using smartphones for tasks irrelevant to learning in controlled learning settings such as in classrooms during lectures or while engaging in classwork supervised by instructors without the latter’s intervention is alarming. Factors that contribute to this phenomenon, as identified in Griffin (2014), include 1) an inability to concentrate due to physiological factors such as insufficient sleep or anxiety, 2) a constant degree of boredom accompanied by an urgency for non-stop entertainment, 3) an overload of cognitive stimulation and 4) an addiction to technology.” Art is a positive distraction, while having your phone out isn’t always the greatest. This causes lower grades in school. Such arts could be painting, photography, drawing, music, and ceramics. Having to take art as a class can reduce the amount of phone usage a student uses in school. I think if people took art as a class, students would attend school more which would improve attendance and academic performance. Instead of using your phone in your free time, I think art can have a better influence on your mind and can strive to motivation in doing school work.
“Petzold’s Art Therapy was incorporated to art, music, dancing, movement, drama, and etc., and found that Therapy’s perspective is not composed of one particular sense but it is the act of integrating the sense with creativity. The existing integrated art therapy is found to help the treatment of smartphone addiction. The therapy has been verified to cure the behavioral and emotional aspects related to depression, sense of control, and assimilation in school.”
Although smartphones are beneficial for school purposes, it can be harmful towards a student’s school life, so art can help deal with mental health issues and improve academic performance. Art is so important; it can save many students from bad academic performances in school and help manage their mental illness(es) better. Art is a type of therapy that relieves stress and to be in a better state of mind. Whether it’s a class or just a free time activity, it boosts up your creative thinking. This can benefit a student in their classes, them as a person, or in future jobs. Some people don’t realize how much art can have a positive impact on you. All types of arts should have more attention than what it gets because it allows students to see the world in a wider and creative way.
Multimodal Statement
Three different modes that I used in my essay are visual, audio, and spatial. The visual piece is the first image shown in my paper. Like I said in my paper, I use music to cope with stressful situation alone or with friends. I incorporated that picture because it relates to what I said in my essay and allows the reader to see people having fun listening to music. It creates that visual representation of music being a type of art that be thatvpositive escape from reality. The audio piece is a video that shows art classes in Iraq to reduce smartphone addiction. I chose this because it automatically relates back to my thesis, the most important sentence in my paper. Even though this is in a different country, it can possibly be US students one day. This video shows how art is a positive distraction and has many benefits which corresponds to my essay. It makes the reader see a different light of how important art is and the possitive impacts it has on students. The last mode I used was spatial. I used a quote from this article I found and made it stand out in my essay. I arranged the words so that words stand out more than others, like different fonts. I also spaced it out between my last body and conclusion paragraphs because it shows how it’s it own quote and very important. The quote basically just states how art therapy develops creativity within a person and that it reduces smartphone addiction. I put this mode into my paper because it provides emphasis on certain words and phrases. The reader can see that art is the solution to reduce smartphone addiction.
