She can’t see. Staring, eyes blank, at her iPhone screen, freshman Lauren McFarland sighs, sets her phone down and rests her eyes for a couple of minutes until her vision returns. And then picks the device right back up.

[I’m on my phone] maybe eight hours a day,” McFarland, who got her first phone in sixth grade, said. “I guess there is kinda something wrong with it, but a lot of people use their phones a lot.”

According to a poll done by The Eagle Angle staff this November, 91 out of 100 students surveyed at the high school have a smart phone. 56 of the students said they checked their phone more than 30 times a day, and according to a recent paper by the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, this is due to the habit- forming nature of smartphones – not addiction.

“Addiction basically means that the person is not able to complete a part of their life or it’s preventing them from becoming who they want to be,” psychiatric mental health doctor from the Psychiatric Medical Associates of Plano Gopan Pillai said. “Some habits can become addictions, but I think it’s not necessarily the same category.”

The study, which tracked 136 subjects over six weeks, reveals that large amounts of smart phone use come from “checking behaviors,” or brief periods of repeated usage, like quickly checking Twitter or emails. Senior Carly Osterman, who got her first phone in fourth grade, said that each day she checks her Twitter feed “too many times to count.”

“Every time I open my phone, it’s just like straight to Twitter. It’s like a reflex I guess,” Osterman said. “I just open up my home screen, and I’m just like ‘Ah, Twitter,’ and I go on, unless I have a text.”

Osterman’s behavior is also an example of a “triggering complex” observed in the study – sometimes just rituals, like being alone or boredom, induce phone use.

“It’s just like, if you’re in an awkward situation, you can pick it up and [be] like, ‘I have something important to do,’” Osterman said. “It’s kinda like a security blanket in a way [because] if I don’t have my phone, I feel naked or like I forgot something.”

Overall, the test subjects in the institute’s study did not find their smart-phone -related habits problematic. Pillai said, however, that these habits do have the potential to become an addiction.

“Some people won’t study because they’re addicted to their phone,” Pillai said. “So a high school student, for example, if you’re so invested in your phone and doing what’s on your phone, whether it be games or Facebook or Twitter or text messaging, that you’re not able to complete your homework or you’re not taking care of yourself, then yeah, it is an addiction.”

Osterman and McFarland said they saw problems with the formation of habits on a smart phone as well.

“Sometimes I’m on it, and I’m just like, ‘Why did I even go on here?’ There’s no reason to,’” Osterman said. “It’s like, ‘Why am I even doing this?’”

McFarland said she realizes how lost she feels without her phone in her hand.

“I think it’s like a habit because I usually don’t go anywhere without [my phone],” McFarland said. “And l if I can’t find it, I’ll stop what I’m doing and look for it until I find it.”

Pillai said this is one of the huge attractions of social media and texting; besides the quick communication it provides, it gives users the chance to say what they want to say when and how they want to say it.

“When you’re texting somebody on your phone, you kind of have a chance to revise what you’re saying. You can go back and delete where you want to say [something] and what you want to say and exactly how you want to say it,” Pillai said. “But when you’re talking to somebody face-to-face and socializing face-to-face, what you say is what you say, and you don’t have a chance to go back and delete what you said.”

But the initial attraction of these devices and all of their features stem from a deeper desire to reach out and be heard by a large group of people, Pillai said.

“When you [use] Instagram and Twitter, you’re actually reaching out to a lot more people than you would if you were talking face-to-face,” Pillai said.

McFarland said that the unrestrained commentary by her classmates is her biggest attraction to Twitter.

“Some people aren’t afraid to say anything, like [on] the confessions page,” McFarland said. “Like those people just say whatever because everyone is saying what they want to.”

The checking habits formed by social media can lead to distraction during other tasks, according to the study. David Spann, Executive Director of Technology for Allen ISD, said the school Wi-Fi, Eagle Net, blocks social media sites to ensure students are using time wisely at school.

“We really want to encourage kids to learn the right way of using the Internet,” Spann said. “Our goal is to make [the Wi-Fi] the very best that we can, to make it the greatest experience that we can, but the focus for providing it is education, so everything we’re doing with that is geared toward education.”

While connected to the school Wi-Fi, sites like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube are blocked for this reason. The school uses a system that categorizes websites, and certain categories, like social media, are then blocked. Spann said one of the main reasons this system is in place is to comply with the federal Children’s Internet Protection Act that requires the district to filter Internet for students.

“Within that law we have to try to help protect kids from sexual predators, and so it kinda drives us on these social media sites for those reasons,” Spann said. “We blocked things that could cause harm to our network, like hacking tools and so forth, but we try to keep it open as much as possible while providing the best experience that we can.”

Spann said all it takes to unblock a website is a call to the school’s principal and a quick review of the website’s content.

“We do get requests to open up sites, and you know when that comes in we take a look at the site. If it looks good, we just unblock it,” Spann said. “If it’s questionable, then I usually reach out to the principal of the school with that request, and they kinda advise me on how they want to move forward.”

Osterman said the blocked websites on Eagle Net are sometimes annoying, but she understands the reasoning behind it.

“I mean a lot of stuff’s blocked, but I guess it’s a good thing because I would get so distracted if it wasn’t,” Osterman said. “If everything was unblocked, I would just be distracted the whole day.”

Osterman said she still sees phone use as a real addiction among students.

“I honestly think it’s an addiction. I know a lot of people who would die without their phones, like they’ll go mentally insane. It’s bad, but it’s true,” Osterman said. “It’s just a mental thing. Like you don’t really need it. It’s not one of those things you need, but you mentally think you need it.”

story and graphics by Megan Lucas//co-editor-in-chief