3 teens give up cellphones for a News On 6 experiment

All public school students across Oklahoma have to put away their cell phones for the entire school day, starting this school year.

That’s a big change for a generation raised on devices. Ahead of the school year, News On 6 wanted to put a group of students to the test.

Could they live without their phones for three days?

News On 6 Anchor Tatum Guinn has been looking at this issue all week and shares the results of our experiment tonight at 6.

Here’s a preview.

Three students stopped by the News On 6 studios on a Tuesday morning and sent their final goodbye texts to their friends. They went without their phones until Thursday evening, finding other ways to fill their time.

One of the students who agreed to participate in our experiment spent most of the first day reaching for her phone, but once she was without the screen, she found that there were plenty of meaningful ways to spend her time instead.

16-year-old Coweta student Elise Graves is locked in, like so many of us. She’s living in her own world in the palm of her hand. And she was willing to give it up for a few days.

TATUM: “Ok, final text, what did it say?”

ELISE: “I’ll miss you guys.”

Going without her device will be a big adjustment. It’s one she and every other public school student in Oklahoma will make this school year.

“I’m a little bit nervous because I just feel like I’m not going to know what to do with my time,” Graves said when she gave up her phone.

It didn’t take long to rediscover her world and reconnect with it. We checked in with her on Thursday, before she came back for her phone, to see how things were going.

“Spent some time with my brother and sister. Just kind of chat with them and see what’s up with their lives because I don’t usually do that a lot because I have my phone. I’m usually cooped up in my room on it,” Graves said. “And I’ve definitely noticed that I have not been in my room hardly at all these past couple days.”

They watched movies and even got outside.

All this time without, made her realize that maybe lawmakers were onto something with this new rule.

“Something I struggled with on the phone is constantly checking if someone has responded to me, and just stuff on social media. That has caused just a lot of stress. I stress myself out over it because I obsess over it,” she said. “And the past couple of days I haven’t had to deal with that, so that’s been really relieving.”

It’s all part of a bigger lesson that each of these students and their families learned during this experiment.

Watch the full story tonight at 6 on News On 6.

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