AirPods Have Their Place, But Not in School

AirPods early in 2019 took the world by storm, it went viral on multiple social media sites.

AirPods wireless headphones created by Apple, cost a whopping $159. This item has generated many opinions from good to bad, and even turned into a meme.

According to Merrian-Webster.com a meme is an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media.

There are a plethora of AirPod memes. The most used are,  “It smells like broke in here,” which was made due to the price being so high. The meme would be people posting pictures of themselves wearing AirPods, with “It smells like broke in here” as the caption.

There are also a lot of memes comparing AirPods to the Apple headphones with wires connected, jokingly calling people wearing them broke.

After the meme went viral, millions of people across the world bought AirPods. The spike of AirPod users continued to spread the meme thoroughly through social media, due to so many people having them and people making multiple of their own versions.

Anna Perez-Vargas, an AirPod user, thinks that “the AirPod meme was created by Apple to make their product popular.”

“The meme did make me wanna buy them, but it was mainly my friends who already had them that did.  

“Overall, I really like my AirPods. They are easy to use, they have good aesthetics, and I would recommend them to people if they listen to a lot of music or work out.” Perez-Vargas said.

Nina Decker, who is also an AirPod user, bought AirPods due to seeing them all over her social media and seeing all the hype on the product.

“I think the meme is super funny and is the main reason why AirPods got really popular,” Decker said.

“Seeing how many people had them didn’t really interest me, but how practical they were for using them at the gym was the main purpose I wanted them.

“My favorite thing about them, is being able to charge my phone and listen to music at the same time. I can also wear them at school without anyone noticing under my hair.”

While there many good opinions for AirPods, teachers at multiple schools across the world have a very different opinion.

Kristen Melican-Nevala, a teacher at Dimond High School, has a very different opinion on AirPods.

I personally see her frustrations every day in the classroom, being her teacher aide. AirPods are a big problem in her classroom.

“Due to them being so small, students can still listen to music even after putting their phones away,” she said.

“AirPods are way worse than any other headphones because they’re so small you constantly have to ask to take them out, and they can easily put them back in.”

A solution to help fix this problem in classrooms is to have students be respectful and not wear them in class. If you’re working individually, ask if you can listen to music.
If this doesn’t work, which will most likely happen, I think the school should just ban headphones.

In my opinion, this would be better than taking them away if students wrongfully use them, because teachers don’t have to have the responsibility to watch them if they take them away.

As a user of AirPods, I really enjoy not getting cords tangled while in my purse. Working out at the gym has also been easier due to my headphone wires not getting caught on the machines I work out on.

The music quality is very good, and I am able to charge my phone and listen to music at the same time, which I find amazing because before I had to pick one or the other.

I see a lot of pros to this product, but I do feel bad for teachers for teaching students who are not paying attention.

There is a time and a place for this product, and school is not one of those places.