Alissa Stevens
“How do we teach focus to a world that is constantly drawing our focus elsewhere?” said
Dr. Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University. “Students have told us
that they check in to their social media accounts every 15 minutes or less and if they are not
allowed to check in then they start to feel anxious.”
Dr. Rosen has done extensive research on how technology is psychologically influencing
teenagers in and out of the classroom. According to his 2012 results, students who had access to
social media while in class or while studying were only able to focus and stay on task for an
average of three minutes (compared to a 15-20 minute attention span in the year 2000).
According to one of Rosen’s studies, students who checked Facebook just once during a 15minute study period did worse on every test they were given.
College students have been especially susceptible to this distraction. Having their laptops
and cell phones with them while they study and listen to class lectures has proven to be a major
factor in students’ drop in attention span and ability to store information. Several approaches
have been taken to try and put an end to this issue and to get students to be able to focus again.
“In a 50 minute class period, I probably spend about 35 minutes of that on social media,”
said Taylor Smith, a sophomore at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. “It’s hard to
write a paper or study for a test now. I did so much better in high school because laptops and cell
phones weren’t allowed in classrooms.”
The University of Illinois boasts lecture hall classes of sizes up to 800 students. Some
measures have been taken to try and control students’ media usage is class, but it is unclear how
effective those measures have been.
“My TA’s are now walking around in my sociology class looking at people’s phones and
laptops to make sure they’re not on social media,” said Smith. “It’s honestly more distracting
than just being online.”
Technology has become a crucial aspect of how college students study and collect
information. Many students choose to take their in-class notes on laptops, buy text books on their
Kindles, or use their cell phones as calculators. No matter what the case, social media is easily
accessible and distracting. And according to NBC, it’s affecting how well students learn too.
“Assignments inevitably take longer when learners split their time between tasks,” said
Bob Sullivan, an NBC columnist, in his article “Students can’t resist distraction for two
minutes…and neither can you.” “Information learned while partially distracted is often quickly
forgotten, so the learning is tragically slow.”
Sullivan also goes on to refer to the process of encoding, or the process of transferring
new information from the brain’s short term to long-term memory.
“Without deep concentration, encoding is unlikely to occur,” said Sullivan.
“I don’t remember anything I learned last year. I really don’t even remember anything
from the beginning of this semester,” said Matt DiFrancesca, a junior at the university. “I didn’t
really bring my laptop to class till last year. And that’s when I saw my grades drop.”
DiFrancesca described how in his 500-person lecture, most of the laptops he can see have
Facebook, online shopping websites, or even movies playing as opposed to note-taking.
“I tried to stop taking my laptop to class but then I was just on my phone the whole time.
And I really don’t think I’d be able to not take my phone with me, I’d be bored to death,”
DiFrancesca said.
Sandy Camargo, an English and Film teacher at the university, has instituted a strict no
laptop or cell phone policy in her classroom in order to eliminate the issue of students’ focusing
on social media rather than their classwork and lectures.
“The increasing size of lecture hall classes and the amount of these large classes are to
blame for this,” said Camargo. “I don’t want to constantly have to monitor what my students are
doing while I’m teaching.”
Camargo wishes the university would make smaller class sizes a bigger focus, as the
larger lectures have taught students that it’s easy to get away with constantly checking their
Facebooks and Twitters. Students have had “bad training from lecture classes”, as Camargo put
it.
“It’s infuriating and it’s personally insulting,” Camargo said. “You put so much of
yourself into your teaching, and they can’t even give you their attention for 50 minutes
anymore.”
“Going on social media is a bigger issue for me when I’m studying or doing homework at
home,” said Kimberly Kitchell, a sophomore at the university. “When I’m in class I’m at least
taking notes most of the time, and I’m only able to check my phone every once in a while. When
I’m at home, I check it like every five minutes or so.”
As college students’ addiction to social media rises, professors around the country have
attempted to come up with creative solutions to help solve this issue. Shawna Bushell, a
professor of education technology at Columbia University, strongly believes that technology
should have a stronger presence in the classroom.
“If you use technology, they’ll respond,” said Bushell. “Students get bored during
lectures- that’s why they text. Their teachers are not engaging their minds, so they focus their
attention elsewhere.”
Like Professor Camargo at the University of Illinois, Bushell believes that the structure of
lectures today is the problem, not social media itself. In her own classes, Bushell has integrated
technology into her curriculum. Students are allowed to use their phones in class to access apps
that correlate with their coursework, such as making an animated avatar or making a Facebook
page for a historical figure.
“If students are going to be on their phones and computers during my class, it’s going to
be for school-related assignments,” said Bushell.
Choosing a technology-focused approach or an anti-technology approach in the
classroom won’t teach students how to focus on their schoolwork outside of class. Dr. Rosen
proposed using a method called a “tech break” to train students’ minds to focus for longer
periods of time. A “tech break” refers to a student allowing themselves to go on social media for
one to two minutes for every 15 minutes that they focus on schoolwork, which eliminates the
anxiety of not being able to check social media while still putting an emphasis on their
schoolwork. Rosen said that they were able to achieve about 30 minutes of focus with students
who used this focus strategy during his studies.
“I am convinced that learning to live with both internal and external distractions is all
about re-teaching the concept of focus,” said Rosen. “That’s what going to help these kids.”
Sources
Sandy Camargo
217-244-7717
Dr. Larry Rosen
lrosen@csudh.edu
Shawna Bushell
212-678-3417
Kimberly Kitchell
815-931-3390
Matt DiFrancesca
630-200-3245
Taylor Smith
224-330-8833