On the days I walk home, the weight of my backpack brings a burning pain to my upper and lower back, along with the pull that makes it harder to breathe. With another year of school at hand, my back has to endure the pain of having the weight of two to three textbooks on my backpack at a time. Adding the additional binders I have, carry around nearly 30 pounds of school materials is excruciating and there is nothing I can do about it.

With the advancements of technology in the past decade, schools need to take advantage of these growths and replace print textbooks with digital textbooks. Having digital copies of textbooks is much more beneficial than print copies.

Having so much weight on your back can cause injuries such as scoliosis, stress fracture or muscle strain. In order to prevent these kind of injuries, the American Academy for Pediatrics recommends that students should not carry more than 10 to 20 percent of their body weight. The biggest benefit of having digital copies in tablets is that you can have all of your textbooks in one place. Instead of having to carry around three textbooks that weigh around 15 pounds students can be carrying around a device that weighs, at most, two pounds.

Not only do digital versions reduce the weight on your back substantially, but they’re also  more efficient to keep the textbooks up-to-date. Instead of having to repurchase thousands of dollars worth of textbooks each year, students would have access to the most up-to-date information on subjects that are constantly changing for a cheaper cost.

Digital textbooks also have more advanced features that can help students complete tasks more efficiently, such as the search feature. Instead of having to flip through pages, students can find content with ease. Also, the feature of note-taking and highlighting proves to be an advantage because students are prohibited from making notes directly into their print textbooks.

Over the past few years, technology has been advancing substantially and has been rapidly growing into everyday life. With digital textbooks, students will be able to immerse themselves in an environment of technology. Coming from my own experiences of lugging around a heavy backpack, being able to reduce the amount of weight on my back would be a big game-changer.