For generations of students and school, a casual sneak peak of a friend’s test was the extent of cheating. Sometimes students would even call their friends for an answer.

With the advent of social media, however, cheating has become a rampant circus of providing answers from several different sources from everything from classwork to homework.

According to statistics, over the past 50 years the amount of cheating that goes on among the students has drastically increased. Coincidentally, the amount of students cheating on homework has been growing since the introduction of various electronics. With a variety of different sources easily accessible at the touch of a fingertip, people have questioned what separates cheating from simply easing their workload by easily completing their work. Some believe that getting answers from friends or looking them up online isn’t truly cheating. 

With no drive to complete the work, some students push their homework and classwork off until the last minute. Others feel that some of the work just fills up their limited time that could rather be spent on more critical homework or studying for tests. Many teenagers are extremely stressed out and overwhelmed by the amount of work from school in addition to their immense amount of work outside of school. They are aware that it has to be completed but feel as if there is not enough time.

All the students are so overworked and stressed with the amount of school work to the point where they go against their morals that they were taught from a young age. The morals that taught them to always be honest in regards to their work ethics are disregarded as they have easy access to many sources with just a few clicks of buttons.

A sophomore says, “I have to prioritize my homework because I have three hours of gymnastics. If I have math and English, I’ll do the math and not English because I already know the English very well.”

Another student says, “If I can’t figure it out, I look it up, even if that means finding the answers online.”

Studies have shown that nowadays, students value grades more than an education. Students base their lives around their grades and worry about what they could do better in a certain class to get the better grade that fits the qualifications that society uses to define a person. Even though these grades should not define a person, students may base their life around their grades and do anything to achieve these goals.  

When it gets to the point where students feel there is no other option to complete their work, they rely on one of their many sources. Snapchat and texting make it extremely easy to get answers from friends. Websites such as quizlet make the answers to the work extremely accessible with just a few clicks of a button. A student may only even need to type in one question from the work to be presented with many Quizlets to choose from.

Work that is viewed as busy work is the work most frequently exchanged between students because even if they were to take their time doing it, they feel as if it wouldn’t help them. So, should they add more work to their already immense workload or relieve some of their stress by asking for a hand in completing their work?

The advancements in technology, along with the minds of today’s millennials, has made homework for students easier than ever before. The busy work has made it unbearable to complete all of the work in a reasonable amount of time in addition to balancing school with a life outside as well. Students have nearly given up on trying to honestly and truthfully complete the work because in today’s world good grades are looked at higher than morals.

The network of students sending and finding answers online is continuing to grow with the increasing amounts of stress that students are continuously put under.