The satisfaction of slamming a textbook shut after completing an assignment and letting out a huge sigh of relief, to me, cannot be replaced by a tablet. What can I do to express my frustration on a tablet? What can I do to release all of the pressure bubbling inside of me while I work? It won’t help me much to poke a tablet screen in an angry rage –the fulfilling effect is just not there.

In addition to these objections associated with using a tablet, studies have shown that people using printed textbooks actually extract more from the content in front of them than those who use tablets. With textbooks, a visual placement of information is presented. Unlike on a tablet, using a textbook is straightforward and simple, especially for people more comfortable with user-friendly items. For instance, if I need to find a certain page, I can quickly flip or skip over sections of the book to get to my desired destination. If I need to highlight, annotate, or circle different words to help me adequately absorb information, it’s easy to grab a pen or pencil nearby and make notes. With a tablet, however, I cannot fulfill my needs to learn to the highest capacity possible. I cannot be as efficient as I want to be. Just to mark something, I would have to change tools, maybe even change tabs – I’d definitely lose my train of thought. Endless scrolling can be tiring, slow, and heavy on the eyes. Plus, words on a tablet have different sizes and fonts that take away from the overall learning experience of an individual read important content.

Some may argue that tablets are convenient and portable and make accomplishing tasks easy. Though this may be somewhat true, the temptation of surfing the Internet and drifting away from the actual purpose of taking the tablet along with you in the first place, almost always prevails. I cannot speak for every human being, but I know that for most teenagers like myself, having an electronic device right there in front of you, in your hands, inevitably leads to procrastination. Simply put, tablet = distraction = procrastination = failure to get things done.

Now that we’re done discussing the hypothetical issues at hand, we can take a step back to visualize the realistic picture. Integrating tablets into classrooms along by training staff members to utilize the new technology is more costly than beneficial. As our universe becomes more and more acquainted with new uses of technology, these supposedly useful devices that are meant to serve as convenient resources in life can turn out to be curses disguised as blessings. Printed textbooks cannot and will not freeze or crash; they are also less susceptible to causing dry, irritated eyes as might tablets. The implementation of tablets as our main learning resource will only induce more complications. Printed textbooks are ultimately the way to go–it’s easy and purposeful, so let’s not change what already works perfectly for us.