Yesterday, a North student won a gold medal in an Olympic sport announced only last year. This sport is specifically for teens, and its teen creators have described it as one of the most grueling sports in history.
Naturally, there were some concerns about allowing teens to participate in this challenge because of its mental and emotional risks. This new sport, alarming for parents and beyond horrifying for teens, is called phoning. For this challenge, all of the players are led out to the stadium, where they need to sit down in a chair and give up their phones, which are placed in a bin in front of them. The winner is the one who can sit longest without taking their phone.
“The person next to me couldn’t do it. As soon as [the event organizers] took his phone, he started screaming and snatched it back from them. He had to be carried away,” said Fiona Deviche, the senior who won the gold medal.
Because of this incident, parents are concerned about letting their teens participate next year.
“I don’t want my son to have his brain chemistry altered forever. I saw that experts are saying that the average teen is addicted to their phone, and taking it from them for long periods of time can lead to conditions too awful to even name,” said a local mother.
Deviche won gold in phoning with a time of four minutes and nine seconds, beating the silver winner by a mere second. As soon as her last competitor gave up and grabbed his phone to doomscroll, she yanked her phone and expected to hear cheering from the stands. However, since the audience was all teens except for the Olympian parents, there were only two cheers that quickly vanished in an ocean of more than 50,000 silent teens watching the livestream of the event on their phones instead of looking up.
“I was disappointed, but when I opened my phone, I saw that everyone was commenting congratulations on YouTube videos of phoning or texting me. They were just too focused on their phones to clap or say it out loud,” Deviche said.
She had to go through intensive training to even stand a chance at winning, including forcing herself to put her phone down for 30 seconds, then a minute and then two. Gradually, she became better at this.
“The first few times, though, I had to be restrained so I wouldn’t lunge for it,” said Deviche.
Deviche’s parents are very proud of her accomplishment and say that they will definitely encourage her to try phoning again next year if the sport is not banned by the OATP, the Organization of Angry Teens and Parents.
