Most students can look back and credit a big piece of their academic success to studying aids like Quizlet. Whether it be using the app for flash cards, practice sets, or more nefarious activities, there is probably not a single student who can claim that they never used Quizlet to

help prepare for a test.

Quizlet itself seems like an innocent and innovative studying tactic that, if used effectively by an individual student, could easily aid them in learning their material, but it is not always used in this manner.

The issue with Quizlet is that it has become so easy to cheat on everything from homework to final exams using the app.

The ethical approach to this should be black and white since obviously cheating is wrong. But it gets to a point where Quizlet creates its own semi-grey area because a lot of times students don’t even consider it cheating. Students really are using the materials on Quizlet to learn their material, but just as often, students use it as a cheating aid rather than a studying aid.

All someone has to do is remember a question from your homework or test, type it into google, and viola! They have a complete copy, answers and all, of the assignment they are working on. A lot of students consider it different from regular cheating, like copying someone’s answers, because they are putting in the work to find the questions.

It is well known that today’s educational system has created students that obviously value the good grade over actually learning the material. Students would rather have the A without the integrity because that is what they have been taught to value by society. To a lot of kids, cheating is second nature and with answers so readily available on Quizlet, most students barely consider it cheating in the first place.

A lot of students blame daily mental breakdowns on the workload they are given. Students are already given almost too large of a workload to handle, and homework makes it nearly impossible to stay on top of things. If resources like Quizlet help to alleviate the stress and help improve general performance, then isn’t there logic behind students thinking it is excusable to use them?

Obviously, cheating is wrong, but so is giving fragile teenagers more responsibility than they can handle. But if you think about it, it’s really hard to justify homework being taken away. You can never really learn anything if you do not practice it, but since most students are copying answers from an outside source and not doing homework anyway, it all just cancels out and winds up as an endless cycle of stress and unproductivity.

What it comes down to is your personal ethics. Is the easy way out all that matters? Or Would you rather put in the work and get the grades you deserve?