How long can you go without checking your phone? An hour? Half an hour? In a culture where swiping is often an irresistible temptation, how can we force ourselves to concentrate on work or study?
Southwest University in Chongqing has come up with a partial solution – providing campus students a swipe-free sanctum. Students stepping into a phone-free study room have to put their devices into a tiny sack hanging in front of the desk. And they must not touch their phones until they leave the room.
“A lot of students could not help playing with their phones from time to time while studying by themselves,” said Zhang Shuran, initiator of the phone-free study room, adding that the move wastes time and always casts a negative impact on students’ study efficiency.
He explained that the phones handed in are looked after by staff in the room, and that students would only be informed of important phone calls from their parents or teachers.
But how effective is the scheme? While Hu Xiaopeng, a senior student from the Academy of Animal Science, has studied phone-free in the room for 530 minutes – the longest of any of the 200 students who have sought an enforced break from their smartphones – Xiao Liu, a sophomore student who used to play mobile games for over eight hours per day, slipped away only 20 minutes after separating from his handset.
“This is really a big challenge to one’s self-discipline,” said Xiao Liu, adding he would come to the phone-free study room more often in a bid to wean himself off his smartphone.
The digital technology boom has increased the functions as well as the accessibility of modern mobile phones, and the number of phone users – along with the average time that people use their phones per day – in China has soared over recent years.
According to a report on China’s Internet development unveiled in August, the number of Chinese with access to the Internet via mobile phones reached 656 million as of June 2016. The average time spent surfing the Internet through mobile phones per user per day exceeded 110 minutes as of July, reported mUserTracker, the only available database measuring Chinese mobile Internet user behavior.
“That’s the reason why we would like to make endeavors in helping campus students get rid of the phone addiction,” said Zhang Shuran. He concluded with a desperate plea to students: put down your phones and read more books!
