As a student, you’ll be fully aware of the everyday struggles of starting your day by heading over to your locker, loading up all the textbooks you need for the day and lugging them around with you as you attend every lesson. Not only does this have detrimental effects on your back and your posture, but it’s also simply a burden on your freedom of movement.
However, thanks to the recent developments in technology, could student textbooks now be a thing of the past? Surely, with the arrival of hardware inventions such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones, now is the time for traditional textbooks and study books to be replaced?
Let’s consider it. Let’s rule out tablets and smartphones now, simply down to functionality. That leaves us with notebook computers. A far cry from the large desktop computers that we had when I was in school, laptops are now renowned for being extremely light, portable and contain everything a student would need, on a large enough screen to read, write and study their textbook’s content. Already, this trumps the textbooks as all a student’s textbooks could simply be accessed on one notebook computer.
On the other hand, notebook computers are expensive, and a decent mid-range one can easily cost a couple of hundred dollars, money that schools and families simply don’t have to spend. However, if a student has, say, eight textbooks, this can easily cost hundreds of dollars itself. Once the information in the textbooks is rendered out of date, new ones need to be purchased. Over an entire academic lifetime, this could cost a school or student thousands of dollars. In comparison, only one notebook computer is needed for up-to-date study materials for life.
Additionally, according to the statistics, over 50 million trees are cut down and used as physical textbook paper in the United States alone. When you take into account textbooks, notepads, and workbooks, this equates to around four billion trees a year, on a worldwide scale. Not only would you be saving a ton of money on these resources by investing in a notebook computer, but you’ll also be saving the environment.
Back to regarding a student’s health, it’s estimated that an average student backpack weighs around 20 pounds, including things like lunch, stationary and other essential day to day items. In contrast, a notebook computer will weigh between three and eight pounds. Multiply to the side effects for carrying each one over the course of 52 weeks for several years; a notebook will be a lot more beneficial.
As it turns out, comparing a notebook computer to a textbook in almost every aspect you choose, and it seems a notebook computer will always come out on top. Maybe it’s time for school and educational facilities to take them more seriously.
