Plugging into class and out of your phone

A new app circulating college campuses rewards students for staying off their phone during class. Pocket Points, created by college students Mitch Gardner and Rob Richardson, helps students receive different incentives for putting their phones away during class. Gardner and Richardson are two California State University Students who realized the seriously problems smartphones create in classrooms.

“I knew there had to be some sort of incentive to get kids to put their phones away,” Richardson said in an interview with USA Today.

The concept is simple: once students open the Pocket Points app and lock their phones, students will accumulate points. The longer a phone stays locked, the more points one will receive.

The app is free and only works on college campuses. Students can redeem their points for different discounts at various local vendors around their university’s city. The app works by using your location to determine that you’re on a qualified campus. From there, you simply open the app, lock your phone, and immediately start earning points. Essentially, the longer you have Pocket Points open and don’t exit the app, the longer you can earn points.

Cameron Ponder, a junior public relations major at the University of Southern Mississippi, was actually introduced to the app by one of her professors. “I was first introduced to the app by Dr. Blackwell and she encouraged us to put our phones away and plug into class by downloading the app”.

According to the app’s history, in just one year the app went from a few thousand downloads to more than 200,000 downloads from students at more than 100 colleges and universities across the nation. The incentives are normally from local restaurants around college campuses because what college students doesn’t like a good discount? According to Pocket Points website, companies like Wendy’s, Chick-Fil-A, Noodles and Company, and Papa John’s Pizza all work with the app to reward students.

Meagan Lonthair, a junior at the University of Southern Mississippi, says Pocket Points is the app that college students needed. “There are so many other things going on outside of your college classroom and it’s easy to get distracted by those things on your phone. I for one have such a bad habit of always checking my phone every time I received a notification, and then I would find myself checking all of my social media platforms. I love using Pocket Points because although we should already be off of our phones in class, it gives you more motivation to not check your phone when you hear it vibrate and it’s nice to be rewarded for that.”

As for what you get as a reward is based solely on the retailer. I decided to check out Pocket Points for myself, and for just receiving 5 points, I was able to get a free Chick-Fil-A sandwich. Seems like a pretty great reward to me.

In most cases, you earn about 1 point for every 20 minutes you aren’t using your phone during class. However, the more people around you who are using Pocket Points, the faster you will accumulate points. This is a part of the app’s effort to reduce cell phone usage in the classroom. The description for the app in the App store is quite intriguing: “Pocket Points gives students rewards for not using their phone during class. Simply open up the application, lock your phone, and start to get rewards. Pocket Points is a great way to prepare you for the real world and just another way to save money and get awesome discounts!”

Pocket Points is currently in use at over 100 universities in the United States and Canada. The current leading university and high school in the nation are Brigham Young University in Provo, UT and Glenbard North High School in Carol Stream, IL. All things considered, Pocket Points is a useful app that is actually successful in getting students off their phone during class. Laptops, however, are another story. Pocket Points is free on the Apple App Store.