Over the years, smartwatches have evolved from being simply fashionable wrist accessories to useful utilities for students across the globe. These wearable devices are similar to smartphones with extra embedded features that are not found on the smartphones, like a fitness tracker and notification delivery.
With advancing technology, more students now use smartwatches to assist them in the management of their academic and personal calendars. This blog will discuss the phenomena of students wearing smartwatches, general effects, efficiency, and statistical data concerning them. Hopefully, at the end of this blog, students will be able to decide if a smartwatch is a useful tool and use them as student productivity tools or not.
Effect of smartwatches on students
In nearly all aspects of the lives of students, smartwatches have made an impact and changed the way students go about their daily business and learning. These gadgets have the following advantages but also have the following problems.
Increase in Effectiveness of Time
Organization and, particularly, time management are two of the major difficulties that students face in their everyday practice, knowing the schedule of classes, accomplishing the tasks, and participating in clubs. Smartwatches enable students to do away with personal organizer alarms, timers, and reminders of calendar dates.
For example, a student will be able to set an alarm for a particular subject for a specific date and time of an exam or an assignment due date. Smartwatches can therefore synchronize with smartphones and other devices to help one manage his or her schedule properly.
Health and Fitness Monitoring
Smartwatches have the following components for well-being: step counters, heart rate screens, and sleep trackers. These features help the students in sustaining health-related behaviors, including walking or taking a break to stretch or ensuring that they slept enough. To the student who spends many hours reading or doing assignments, a reminder to stand or stretch will reduce fatigue away from the eye.
Access to Technology on the Go
Especially in an academia where things are evolving very rapidly, the availability of the technology is very vital and should therefore be easily and quickly accessed. Through smartwatch features, a student can see a notification, respond to a message, and even use an app without using the phone. The compactness comes in handy when one is listening to a podcast while waiting for the next class or while commuting. Smart watches allow students to answer calls and messages infrequently to ensure that they are not diverted most of their time by the phones.
Distractions Learned in Class
Despite having several benefits, smartwatches are, however, considered a distraction. Apps such as notifications, games, or social media interfaces on smartwatches can cause distractions during a class. To this, students should employ discipline and disable non-related notifications while in lectures. Schools and colleges may also require setting standards on the usage of smartwatches in schools or colleges.
Overall, it can be concluded that smartwatches have both advantages and disadvantages with regards to the students. Thus used, such devices have the potential to improve productivity and quality of life. But still, students have to bear in mind that these tools can be distracting and misused.
Should students get a smartwatch?
Looking at smartwatches, it is important to state the fact that they are not bad for students but rather their effectiveness depends on the capacities and options with which they are used. These devices have advantages and disadvantages that can be useful but sometimes a bit challenging for the students.
Advantages of Smartwatches
Smartwatches can actually be of a lot of help to students from various points of view. First of all, they assist students in tracking tasks or tests by linking the app with Google Calendar or Apple Reminders, etc. Tracking facilities make students be as active as possible so that their health aspect, that is, the physical health, could be good.
Also, to boost student productivity, options like guided meditation applications or deep breathing techniques will assist the learner in dealing with stress circumstances, most particularly during the time of examinations. Any additional features, such as the option to receive information or a notification without a phone, are simply more conveniences.
Challenges and Downsides
Smartwatches possess the mentioned quality, which has some disadvantages in the following ways. The first and one of the biggest disadvantages of using them is that they are relatively expensive. Traditional bling equipment, such as expensive smartwatches made by such companies as Apple and Samsung, are often unaffordable for some students. The same potential threat of increased screen time is another issue under consideration.
Smartwatches are worn to decrease reliance on the phone, and yet, if not managed appropriately, they also result in overuse of gadgets. Privacy is also still a concern because some smartwatches record information that may be given out to others.
Effective Ways To Use Smartwatches By Students For Better Productivity
Being an effective tool, a smartwatch has to be used effectively in order to get the best out of it by students. This is done by, for instance, switching off the notification alerts during a study session or class. There are other basic functions that the student should remember instead of using the device for game purposes or social media instead of doing health applications like a timetable for their classes or fitness applications, among others.
Selecting the right smartwatch that meets that budget and requirements of the customers to the letter is equally crucial.
How effective are smartwatches?
The outcome for smartwatches for students depends on how they adapt to these devices and which of the provided functions they are going to utilize. Now, let us take some insights into how smartwatches justify their existence.
Academic Use
Smartwatches have several academic uses that make them very useful for the learners. For instance, they could be employed in annotative modes such as Evernote or Google Keep. Taking calculations during a class or making reminders of homework assignments are other normal examples that we can give. For instance, some smartwatches come with voice capability through which students can complete tasks with their hands unnecessarily.
Productivity Features
Smartwatches are therefore developed to increase efficiency. Some of the tools that help the students include a calendar to manage tasks and notification ledgers that remind the students of their duties. For instance, the student gets an alert that there is a class in an hour or a reminder that an assignment is due. Through providing this concept, smartwatches ensure that students do not keep on checking their phones, hence do not distract the students from their tasks.
Health Benefits
It must be understood that physical and mental health tremendously influence academic outcomes, and smartwatches indeed meet this factor well. Applications include step counters where a student is able to track the number of steps they take, sleeping habits, and guided breathing. Exercise, or lack of it, does not only reduce the incidents of easily preventable diseases but also leads to better cognitive performance, thus making students more attentive in class.
Practical Challenges
Smartwatches are useful; however, they have some drawbacks. For example, battery issues that limit the operating time of the device may make the students annoyed because they need to carry out numerous activities on the device for a whole day as learners. Further, most smartwatches depend on the phone for other functions to work, which may not be easily useful to some people. Such practical issues may influence the process of smartwatch use in general.
Therefore, the usefulness of smartwatches for students can be highly overestimated, totally depending on how they are employed.
Smartwatches’ Impact on Students: Statistics
Quantitative data offers the necessary information about the increased interest in smartwatches among learners as well as pulling off different aspects of learners’ lives.
Usage Trends
Outcomes of the studies reveal that the adoption of smartwatches by students has significantly grown. The main brands are Apple, Samsung, and Fitbit, and the preference is for an Apple Watch. These trends show how, with each passing day, smartwatches are incorporated into the lives of students.
Academic Performance
The students who utilize the smartwatches for academic purposes will likely get better grades than others. For instance, students using smartwatches to set reminders of assignments or examinations got to complete them 25% before those who did not. This means that smartwatches can be useful in issues such as time management and therefore create a positive impact on performance.
Health and Fitness
Smartwatches have the further advantage of being beneficial for students’ health. A survey carried out on the different students as to the use of fitness tracking applications in the smartwatches adopted revealed that 60% of the students who incorporate the use of the smartwatches’ fitness tracking features normally incorporate higher levels of physical activity. Furthermore, the features that enable students to track their sleeping patterns are also embedded to enhance the quality of their sleep in order to efficiently regulate their energy levels.
Final Thoughts
There is no doubt that smartwatches have found an important place in the life of students, and for good reason, as their capabilities range from enhancing time management to improved health control, etc. However, these devices also have challenges, for instance, the cost, and more to that, the distractions caused by the devices.
Thus, a smartwatch’s value for a student only depends on its usage and the essential functions in use. For students who plan to buy a smartwatch, the set of problems is rather simple: all features are necessary but should not be considered mandatory.
