Tap. Tap. Tap tap tap tap. You frustratedly spam the refresh button of the browser for spotify.com, hoping the window clouding your screen goes away. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. Shutting your iPad, you look over to the senior’s screen next to you, open to Block Blast, a game they recently downloaded with their unrestricted App Store. You sigh.
Every year after the Class of 2025 has had restricted access to iPads, including no App Store or iMessages. Instead of an App Store, the Stevenson faculty turned to Self-Service, an application only allowing approved school-specific apps for download by the administration. Seniors still have access to “special” iPads as this restriction was placed for Class of 2026 and beyond. While rumors are floating around about why this restriction was placed or who is to blame, one thing is for certain: it’s an unfair regulation.
The Class of 2025 had access to unrestricted iPads their whole high school experience, while faculty claim the restrictions were placed to promote learning rather than distractions. Sure, students use their iPads to play games like Brawl Stars in class and talk to their friends on iMessage, but if that was the issue, then why allow any class to have unrestricted iPads? Giving the senior class unregulated access when the school’s reasoning behind restrictions is to distract less seems counterproductive. I agree that later classes wouldn’t be as focused with unrestricted iPads, but setting restrictions to all but this senior class isn’t a good example of equality. Every other grade is aware that seniors got “special” iPads, while none of us get them.
Restricted iPads aren’t much better, though, in terms of preventing misuse. With how tech-savvy Gen Z is, students find ways to still communicate and distract themselves, whether it is attempting to use the staff Wi-Fi or finding other unrestricted sites to communicate. Zoom and Gmail are both apps needed for school purposes, yet students communicate during class with these programs, defeating the purpose of the imposed restrictions when students can just find workarounds. By turning to another app after getting restricted, the goal of the restriction fails and the lack of faculty detection makes it even worse for the students’ attentiveness. Restrictions will always encourage students to find loopholes to still access a game or restricted website, no matter how limiting the regulation is.
Similarly, students use website games, like 2021’s Retro Bowl trend, despite the restriction on the App Store. Removing the App Store was aimed to deter students from downloading their favorite games to play in class as they are not personal devices, while in reality, students just use website versions of their favorite games, which are harder to block for administrators. Despite Stevenson restricting a couple of new websites every now and then, students can find similar versions of their games on different websites, making these restrictions tiring to both impose and deal with. That isn’t to say that playing games in class is okay—it isn’t—but that still doesn’t stop several students from doing it.
For students who would have used the App Store for educational purposes, it only forces them to use the apps provided to them in Self Service, limiting them to a set of specific study tools. Even clubs require their students to communicate and receive event notifications through social media applications, forcing students to turn to their phones to access them, despite faculty frowning on using mobiles during school hours. Instead of students using their iPads, they whip out their phones, creating a perpetuating cycle of distractions, making devices in general harder to limit.
The annoyances and loopholes of this restriction make it hard to see any benefit, especially after the pandemic. According to a study done by the National Library of Medicine, addiction rates and screen time increased significantly after the pandemic, with an increase from 5 percent to 50 percent in children and adolescents alone. Students today are far more likely to spend more time on their iPads during class, and these limits do nothing to stop it.
Rather, the real problem isn’t that students need limits on what they can access on their iPads; the core problem is that students spend too much time on their screens, regardless of what they do on their devices. Adolescents are attached to their devices, so removing them completely from the classroom ensures a distraction-free environment. If students don’t have a reason to have their iPads out, regulating who uses their devices as a hindrance in class is far more conspicuous.
No restrictions but minimal device times allow students to be more present in class while having the responsibility to manage whatever apps they want or how they want to spend their time outside of school with their device. Now, if every teacher adopted this tactic instead of allowing students to use their iPads all of class, these restrictions that most students despise wouldn’t be necessary, and Stevenson’s pledge to maximize every student’s success would ring true.
In the future, this restrictive atmosphere only creates other variations for what students do on their devices in class, rather than preventing their usage. For teachers, playing this game of Whack-A-Mole to stop students from using their favorite websites is not only exhausting but also annoying for students. As this continues, this restrictive atmosphere only furthers- going from restricting games, next apps, and certain websites, to limiting the use of IRC and Stevenson Space because students are on those websites a on. Limiting device usage instead reduces these issues more effectively, allowing both staff and students to take a breather from technology and focus on their learning.