According to the Spotify website, they are a “digital music, podcast, and video service that gives you access to millions of songs and other content from creators all over the world.” It is used by roughly 22.5 million people on average, daily. In that average, a large majority includes students, in particular, high school students.
Despite these statistics, Wake County has taken the initiative to block access to services such as Spotify to Wake County students. However, services such as ChatGPT remain unlocked and widely accessible to students. Spotify isn’t the only website to be blocked, with Pinterest also being a victim of this unfair blocking.
This has caused controversy amongst students, as they feel as if their school is encouraging them to cheat by making AI services easily accessible, whereas programs that harbor concentration or creativity are blocked. As a result of applications being blocked, students often resort to going on their phones, which as a result, ends up distracting them.
Sophomore Paige Maxfield said, “I think Spotify should be unblocked on computers because in the classes where I’m allowed to listen to music I get so much more work done, and there’s nothing you can do on Spotify that infringes on your personal academic achievement. By allowing students to use Spotify on the school Chromebooks, you can allow for success without students going on their phones to use the same website.”
Music is often underestimated in how much it can aid students studying. Some believe that music is too distracting or simply not necessary in order to get work done, when in reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
A study conducted in 2014 by Bristol University put hens into groups, one under “normal” circumstances, where the hens were left alone and waited to lay eggs, whereas the second group was put under similar conditions, only this group had classical music.
The results showed that music had an effect on egg production, as hens that listened to classical music were more likely to enter nesting boxes.
On the other hand, some would argue that websites such as ChatGPT being unblocked is a good thing rather than bad, citing that AI can be a valuable tool to students in order to further expand upon and understand complex concepts.
FVHS computer science teacher, Dr. Walter Honeycutt said, “Students have no idea how to properly use it. AI, if used correctly, could be a powerful tool to help advance their education, but they use it in order to get a quick grade, which is not the right way to do it. If you don’t understand something, you can easily use AI to explain it and make yourself more marketable.”
Despite AI’s high capability to be an incredible learning tool, capable of breaking down the most complex math equations and simplifying them for anybody, that doesn’t change the fact that students will, and have abused it to just get a quick answer. If taught how to use AI effectively, rather than conveniently, students could learn a lot.
Fundamentally, while AI can be used to help in classrooms, it is ridiculous that ChatGPT isn’t blocked, meanwhile Spotify is. Wake County should reevaluate what programs are truly beneficial and should unblock Spotify in order to give students a more convenient way of accessing their music.
