The Use of Cell Phone in School and its Effect to the Academic Performance of the Students

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

The Department of Education prohibited the use of cell phone inside the classroom. Yet, the impact that cell phones had made to the students have been both positive and negative. This issue was also raised several times during the parent-teachers meeting urging the immediate solution. This study focused on the use of cell phone in school and its effect to the academic performance of the students. The result of this study could be the basis in implementing a school policy regarding the use of cell phone by the students in school and design an intervention to address the concern of achieving the good academic performance of the students.

METHODS

The students' respondents were asked to answer the survey questions if they use cell phone or not when they are in school, and their reasons for using it. The source of data to identify the academic performance of the students were the copies of SF5 (Report on Promotion and Level of Proficiency & Achievement). The study is a combination of descriptive and inferential analysis since the data collected were analyzed using the measures of central tendency (mean) and independent sample t-test to answer the research questions.

RESULTS

The findings revealed that the reasons of using cell phone by the students while they are in school are the following: (1) use applications like calculators, dictionaries, word processing, camera, video editing, and the like; (2) browse the internet for research; (3) visit and update their social media account and group chat; (4) play offline or online games; and (5) read and send text messages. It was also discovered that there was a significant difference between the average grade of the students who used cell phone, and those who did not use cell phone in school in terms of their academic performance and it was favorable to the former because they had a higher general average grade than the later.

DISCUSSIONS

The result basically suggests that in one way or another, the use of cell phone while in school helped the students in their studies. The school authorities must set a clear policy regarding the use of cell phone by the students in school to maximize the benefits and to avoid the distractions that it may brought which affect their academic performance. However, there are still other factors to consider that might affect the academic performance of the respondents that need further study.