News Photo by Julie Goldberg Alpena High School sophomore MyKenize Klimczak looks at a notification on her Fitbit on Jan. 10. The Fitbit, a wearable device that tracks health stats, also alerts her if someone texts or calls.

ALPENA — When Alpena High School sophomore MyKenize Klimczak wakes up in the morning, she usually gets ready for the day before she picks up her phone and scrolls through it.

“I wait until I’m ready to check it,” Klimczak said. “A lot of people I talk to do check their phone before they start getting ready.”

Cell phones are impacting the way students interact with the world, students and educators say. They aren’t making eye contact like in the past. Social media is also impacting students because they can spend a lot of time on social media sites, distracting them from other things.

Klimczak said she feels that distraction.

At school and in class, Klimczak said, she feels the urge to check her phone when it’s in her backpack, especially because she knows she has a text message waiting for her to read.

She wears a Fitbit, a watch-like device that tracks her health stats and also is synced to her phone and lets her know when someone texts or calls. The Fitbit shows her what the text message says, so she sees that right away.

Even when she’s sitting in class.

“It’s definitely an urge to check it, especially when it goes off on my watch,” Klimczak said.

She said some teachers allow students to use their phones in class, as long as their work is getting done, but “a lot of teachers make sure phones aren’t in class, because they know that we’ll get distracted with them.”

During passing time and at lunch, Alpena High students are allowed to use their phone, which Klimczak does. She might ask her friends about homework she missed in class, or just talk to them about the day and what’s going on.

But she also uses the time to interact in person with her friends.

“I text my parents sometimes, like if I have any last-minute plans after school,” Klimczak said. “But I usually use lunch to interact with my friends.”

After the final school bell rings, Klimczak goes home and sits with her phone for about a half an hour before starting her homework. After her homework is done, she goes back on her phone for a while, most likely until dinner time.

Klimczak said dinnertime is family time, so phones are put away.

After dinner, Klimczak said she does something to distract herself so she doesn’t play on her phone all the time before going to bed.

“I usually hang out with my family, but then, before I go to bed, I do one last scroll through my social media accounts,” she said. “I get lost in it and then I forget what time it is.”

Throughout the day, Klimczak thinks, she spends a total of an hour and a half to two hours on her phone during the school week. She said she uses her phone to do school work in classes and to set reminders for when homework is due.

“I check my social media accounts probably about three times an hour,” Klimczak said. “When I’m bored, I just scroll through them.”

Klimczak makes sure she’s not spending a lot of time on her phone. She has reminders set to notify her it’s time get off if she reaches an hour on the phone.

“I like to make sure I’m not on it too much,” she said. “But, especially on the weekend, I’m on it a lot, because I’m not as busy.”

Julie Goldberg can be reached at 989-358-5688 or jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jkgoldberg12.