Literacy In Cell Phones

Tracy Grijalva

Professor Hawkes

English 327

October 9, 2023
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Introduction

Something that is prevalent in most house-holds and even schools today, are cell phones.

I believe that it is safe to say that most teenagers or the youth of America spend quite a bit of

time on their cell phones. But, how much of that time is productive and furthers their knowledge

and how much of it is just wasting away the opportunities and youth of today? Does having a cell

phone or a computer help students to learn, or just give them the opportunity to become more

easily distracted. The views on technology are either it is ruining literacy or it’s the next best

thing since sliced bread. That is what I will be studying, whether cell phones/technology can be

used as a literacy forum for teenagers.

Assumptions & Early Hypothesis

As someone who has a teenager in the house and works within a school district, teenagers

are all around me and therefore cell phones. I will be studying the teenagers and observing their

cell phone usage throughout the week and asking questions when appropriate. As these groups

meet in school, during sports practices and communicate with each other through their cell

phones, I will have the opportunity to observe them through several different types of

interactions. I believe that the way that they communicate in person will be vastly different than

the way that they communicate through cell phones. The language will probably have a lot of

slang; such as “bro” or “bet”, whereas texting will probably have more emojis. I do not think that

most of what they say or do with their phones will be of an educational value; nor do I believe

that many parents would be happy to see the things that their teenagers do with their technology.

Methodology

When I sat down and interviewed my daughter, Jaymie Grijalva Age 13, I learned that

she actually spends quite a bit of time on her phone each day. She stated that she spends about
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five hours of her day on her phone. As I added up the amount of time that she is awake, I was

surprised and slightly appalled at the amount of time. To start her day, she awoke at 6:00 AM in

the morning. However, she is not a morning person and will be rushing out of bed at 7:00 AM to

ensure that she is dressed appropriately and that her morning chores are done. We try to be out of

the house at 7:30 AM to ensure that the Elementary children in our household get to school on

time at 8:00 AM. So for the hour that she is awake in the morning, I do have to get onto her a

couple of times to ensure that she is getting herself ready. She gets to her school around 8:30 AM

and school begins at 9:00 AM. Her school has a pretty strict no cell-phone policy that results in

the phone being confiscated if it is seen. She gets out of school at 3:40 PM and works on

whatever homework she has. Then she has cheerleading practice from 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM and

from there it is shower and bed. So where the five hours comes into play I am not sure.

When I asked her what she did on her phone, she stated that watches videos, learns to do

dances and cheers for her sport, and speaks with her friends. I asked what they spoke about and

she said mostly homework or events at school. And as with many teenage girl groups, the drama

that is occurring on campus. I asked if she does anything educational with her phone and she

mentioned that she watches a lot of how-to videos. Such as, how to crochet or how-to cook

certain things. She mentioned that she likes to read through the comments on things that interest

her. I asked her how her cell phone usage compares to her friends and she said that they spend a

lot of time on social media. This was her segway to ask for social media as she currently does not

have any.

When I asked her about the reading that she does, either on technology or in a hand held

book, she stated that the first book that she remembers reading is The Legend of Spookley the

Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano. She then stated that she actually likes to read, she prefers,
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murder/mystery/thriller books which was surprising to me as she has never really shown an

interest in anything except her phone when we are home. My daughter also stated that the

majority of what she reads is on a technology platform as she does not have many hard copy

books on hand.

When discussing learning and reading through technology, I learned that after COVID,

the majority of the work that students do is on Google Classroom, an online forum where

teachers can assign, distribute, and grade assignments all through the computer. An article titled

“How Information-Seeking Behavior, Essential Technologies, and Resilience Enhance the

Academic Performance of Students” written by Muhammad Miraj and others states that,

“Information-seeking, and therefore academic self-efficacy, mediates the positive relationship

between exploration and academic performance”, this is showing that while it may seem like

teenagers and youth are wasting away their childhood on technology. They are actually

understanding and processing information at a much faster rate because they are able to obtain

that information at a much faster rate.

However, there is a downside to technology. One that as I mentioned earlier, I do not

allow my daughter to participate in, Social Media. In the Miraj article, they also looked into the

academic resilience of youth and compared two different sets of children. What they found out is

“self-esteem and endurance are significant predictors of academic performance in both

categories [of the children]”(Miraj). This means that the students who are confident and resilient

are able to do well academically with technology. Students who struggle with self-esteem and

get overwhelmed may not do so well. Social Media plays a huge role in this because a large part

of teenagers literacy is based around their social media. Writing their posts, creating their blogs,

writing up youtube descriptions. They even read and respond to people from all over the world.
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For instance, a 16 year old creates a youtube video of themself baking a cake. They read the

recipe, write up the recipe descriptions and the steps that they took. The video gets posted, then

they are able to read responses from hundreds if not thousands of people from all over the world.

Eugenia Ives wrote “Technology on Teenagers” in which she studied the effects of

technology, namely cell phones, on teenagers. In this she found that there were some things that

helped teenagers, as mentioned above. The availability of information and learning to find

information at a faster pace being one of them. However, there are some negative side effects to

technology as well. “One striking negative effect of digital technology consumption is how it

diminishes our capacity for empathy by limiting how much people engage with one another”

(Ives). This is something that I have noticed working in a school setting with teenagers. Things

that are said on social media behind a keyboard are things that would never be said out loud. One

student in particular wrote about how they would record another student getting jumped and

laugh about it. When I called that student in to ask why, they broke down in my office and cried.

This student felt confident behind a keyboard; but, when confronted with the words that were

said, they could not handle the consequences that came along with it. The disappointment on the

faces of staff that had once believed the students was a kind and generous person.

Data Analysis

The literacy of technology is a complicated and convoluted one. People are able to read

and write across multiple platforms and forums at the same time. They are able to communicate

with people that without technology would take weeks to do so. However, as mentioned in the

beginning, “ The debate typically addresses these issues in polarized terms: new technologies are

either execrated as destroying the realm of education altogether, or they are

regarded as the solution to all the problems we face” (Fulhound p 436). Technology opens many

doors to help with literacy, it also puts in many roadblocks. The question is which side of the

scales weighs more. Throughout this study I realized that while students may spend a lot of time

on their phones, it is not always scrolling through social media. They google things for

homework, look up random facts to show their friends, read articles or posts that interest them or

encourage their hobbies.

Conclusion

Social Media and technology has opened up the literacy forum like never before. People

can quickly type up responses to emails or text messages in seconds instead of having to hand

write letters. The messages can be sent and viewed within seconds whereas they used to have to

be mailed and wait weeks for a response, if you ever received one at all. Nowadays people send

letters in the mail for fun rather than out of the necessity it once was. Overall, after observing the

teenages that I work with and interviewing my daughter, I believe that technology is an amazing

literacy tool. People are able to communicate more easily, are able to read things they may have

otherwise never been able to get their hands on and are able to learn a variety of different things

at their own pace. My data is skewed in that my daughter does not have social media, whereas

most other teenagers do. So if given the opportunity, a broader scope of interviews and

observations with students who are not limited with their technology would probably give a more

accurate representation of literacy within technology. I don’t believe that technology should be

the end of the written world and that sometimes reading a physical book is a nice change of pace.

However, cell phones/technology should be considered a literacy forum as it is the way that the

recent generations communicate and express themselves.

Works Cited

Fulford, Amanda, et al. “Technologies of Reading and Writing: Transformation and

Subjectivation in Digital Times: Technologies of Reading and Writing.” Educational

Theory, vol. 66, no. 4, 2016, pp. 435–40, https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12181.

Grijalva, Jaymie N. Personal interview. 21 Sept. 2023.

Miraj, Muhammad, et al. “How Information-Seeking Behavior, Essential Technologies, and

Resilience Enhance the Academic Performance of Students.” Frontiers in Psychology,

vol. 12, 2021, pp. 651550–651550, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.651550

Ives, Eugenia A. iGeneration : The Social Cognitive Effects of Digital Technology on Teenagers.

Distributed by ERIC Clearinghouse, 2012.

Field Notes and Photographs

This is a copy of my field notes from what I observed at a High School Homecoming Football

Game. I broke it down into the different groups of students that I observed. The Student Section,

where the majority of the school spirit resided. Many of the students were yelling and cheering

for the game, engaging in school spirit. Those I did observe on their phones were usually
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speaking to someone trying to locate them in the stadium or taking pictures together.

This was a quick field note that I observed while picking up my daughter from school. Having

never done field notes I wasn’t sure what all to include. I observed the majority of the students

leaving campus staring down at their phones. Whether they were walking through the parking lot

or crossing the street at a major intersection. These students were all on their phones. At one

point a female student was staring so hard at her phone she was nearly hit.
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This is a breakdown of my daughter's day that I observed after she told me she spends 5 hours on

her phone a day. I tried to explain what should be happening and what she was doing during that

time. After breaking it down, I can see how she was able to estimate 5 hours a day. In nearly

every category she is looking at her phone.

This is an image of my daughter on her phone at 8:30 PM when she should be getting ready for

bed.
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This is a screenshot of mine and my daughters text messages when I am scolding her for sending

me abbreviations or slang. We have discussed numerous times that while I am not ancient, I

cannot keep track of the ever changing texting vocabulary. So, when she chooses to text me

slang, there are consequences. Usually I make her clean her room.
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This is a screenshot of my daughter's conversation with a friend. Here she is arranging to meet

up with a friend and train horses. My daughter wants to barrel race and become a veterinarian

and is already researching techniques, horses, training material and even the best Vet schools for

college.