The pandemic has brought online learning to the forefront of education systems. While these services offered benefits during quarantine, the harm that online homework does to students outweighs the positives.
Online education gives students the chance to work at their own pace and allows teachers more efficient ways to grade and assign work to students. However, these benefits can quickly turn into drawbacks.
Most online assignments are due by midnight. This alone can be detrimental to the way students complete homework. Before the internet, students simply turned in homework the next time they were in class. This means they had plenty of time to complete assignments either the night it was assigned or the next morning before class. Today, students are almost encouraged to stay up late completing assignments due at midnight. Personally, I am an expert procrastinator, and if an assignment is due at midnight, I am almost always going to start working on it at 11 p.m. When assignments weren’t online, students could still procrastinate, but even if they waited until the hour before their class started, they could still get a good night’s sleep.
Online homework also takes away from the traditional five-day school and work week. Without the internet, teachers would be forced to wait until Monday morning to accept work they assigned over the weekend. Now, they could assign work due at noon on a Saturday if they wanted. This takes away from the only designated free time students are given. What is the point in having weekends and holidays if we are going to be assigned work on those days?
Supporters of online learning programs say that online education can highlight time management skills, which is favorable to future employers. At the same time, students without such skills are often left to struggle in online work environments—and looked down upon because of it. 
Online homework also discourages full understanding of material. When all work is done through a screen, it becomes difficult to focus and easier to search the answers. If you type “online homework” into Google, some of the first suggestions are for “help” and “answers.” This means students aren’t studying to learn; they’re studying for a homework grade.
Sitting in front of a screen during class and at home also produces adverse mental and physical health effects. Studies on children and adolescents show that after increases in screen time, test subjects displayed less curiosity and more distractibility. These students were also more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression or anxiety. Online learning also does not necessarily promote physical activity. Computer and internet usage in college students has been linked to obesity, backaches, headaches and poor sleep quality.
The convenience of grading and assigning work should not be more important than students’ well-being and free time. While asynchronous learning helped schools get through the pandemic, if students are attending class in person, online homework can do more harm than good.
Mia Coco is a 19-year-old political communication student from Alexandria.