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In a society revolving around technology, the opportunity for social interaction, teamwork, and leadership are needed more than ever. Morgan Freeman, the famous actor, once said: “When I was a teenager, I began to settle into school because I’d discovered the extracurricular activities that interested me.” Extracurricular activities provide students with opportunities to explore their interests, and to find themselves. I believe that extracurricular activities should be anything but extra. They should be mandatory in every school. I believe this because extracurriculars build necessary characteristics, encourage all students to get off their phones and get involved, helping mental health and building friendships, and also helps towards building a college application and résumé.

Imagine you are in a college class and the teacher gives you a group assignment, but you have no experience of working with others. What can you bring to the situation if you haven’t received anything to give? Wouldn’t it help if you had been able to take part in some kind of activity that would give you the skills to do well on the project? Extracurricular activities should be made mandatory because they can provide many useful characteristics that are important in a student’s future. If you take part in one of these activities, you can be exposed to teamwork, leadership, problem solving, communication, and many more skills that can be important for a good future.

A common problem for children now is that they spend too much time interacting with some kind of screen instead of interacting with people. Too many times you will see someone that doesn’t know how to carry on a conversation or work with others. This is because instead of communicating with other people, children have the luxury of being able to message someone over the internet, which leads them to do or say things that they wouldn’t have the courage to do in real life. This makes it hard to gain experience that is needed in their future lives. Extracurricular activities such as speech league, sports, and many others should become mandatory because they all provide great opportunities where you can interact with others and improve your social skills.

Whenever you apply for a job in the real world, networking matters more than your GPA. In college, students are encouraged to get involved socially, whether it be Greek life, sports teams, or clubs related to their major. High school should have similar opportunities required. Extracurriculars will give you the opportunity to work with other people, allowing you to make personal connections to people with similar interests. Also, you need to be prepared to show that you can take charge when necessary. Extracurricular activities help you to develop leadership qualities, which can help you to get into college and in getting a job. Taking part in extracurriculars gives you important experience that is hard to learn otherwise, so why not make it mandatory?

There may be some people that would disagree by saying that there might not be any extracurricular activities that interest some students, and the students may not be able to manage their time with the extra activities, so why should they have to do it? According to James Roland in the article “Negative Aspects of Extracurricular Activities“, teenagers often struggle with time management, and some extracurricular activities demand more time and energy than many students can handle. If the school makes them mandatory, then there will have to be time for it. And even though there aren’t activities for every single person’s interests, they could still try something new. New activities give you new experiences, and they could maybe even point you in the right direction of what you want to do in the future. There is nothing wrong with trying something you wouldn’t normally try, and it can even lead to better opportunities and experiences.

Extracurricular activities should not be an extra thing. Schools should make these activities mandatory because they build necessary characteristics, encourage all students to get off their phones and get involved, helping mental health and building friendships, and also help towards building a college application and résumé. According to a 1993 article by Alexander Astin, almost any type of student involvement in college positively affects student learning and development. Why shouldn’t schools make extracurriculars mandatory if they do so much for students in the long run?