The Golden Trident

By Nina Wither

The 2024/2025 school year was the first year that Golden High School integrated and enforced a school wide phone policy, requiring students to place their phones in pockets at the front of each class, for the entirety of the class. While the Jeffco School District does not have a districtwide phone policy, many other schools in the district are also integrating similar policies. 

The end of the summer became drenched in talk about the new year’s phone policy, as rumors of its severity reached the mouths of many. The first day of school came as a wake up call to many students, including myself. The pushback and complaints I heard were immense, using phone cases as replacements, claiming that we forgot it or don’t have one. Because addicts will always find a way. 

Can you blame us though? Everything we knew about how to interact with our peers was taken from us. You just took alcohol from a bunch of alcoholics, and acted like it was nothing, with little grace during remission. We unconsciously choose our phones over our peers. We know everything about the latest scandal and not the people we sit next to. The ones we see everyday, the ones we have to work with, the ones who truly could have an impact on our lives. Instead, we live for the next news story, the next breakup, the next musician to overdose. Because time on a screen equates to dollars and we live for money, no matter how much we say money can’t buy happiness. 

However, it’s not the adults fault. Our society treats this addiction like it doesn’t exist, ignoring its consequences until it’s too late. Have you ever looked at your pinky finger? The indent in-between the second joint from your hand and the tip of your finger is worn down due to the continuous placement of your phone. Have you ever wondered where the last 20 minutes of your life went? Have you ever simply opened your phone to make yourself seem busy to avoid an interaction or conversation? Have you ever been the one that is forced to pull out their phone because everyone else is on theirs? 

The presence of our phones eliminates every minute of silence, every second of nothing in our lives. We are no longer forced to stare out the window and simply think, giving our brain a second to wander. Our world moves at such a fast rate that we are trained to think that we don’t have enough time to spare. We can’t possibly waste a couple minutes. We walk while texting, we drive while watching Tiktok, we take notes in class while shopping online. 

Studies show that we have replaced screen time as time for creativity. The excess of time is a trigger for creativity. We lack creativity and it shows, we care too much about what other people think. The problem is, who we are is developed in these small amounts of time, the decisions we make in these little seconds work to define us as people. 

It’s an all or nothing type of thing. One girl begging for distance from her phone will still check it continuously and bury her personality in the inches of her screen. I’ll still ask for more screen time and scroll for hours. The adults have to be the bad guys, you are the ones in charge. 

An intervention is needed because addicts rarely recover on their own. You are the ones that have the ability to change and have control over our habits. As much as I dread putting my phone in the pockets every single class, every time I do it the more grateful I become, the more interested I am in my peers, the more I want to accomplish. Please be the bad guy right now, we’ll thank you later.