Blogpost written by Shubham Shrestha and Robert Georgies
Imagine you are sitting in a lecture and it’s the stuff you really need to know for your future career. Your professor is explaining something very important, and then-buzz-a notification goes off on your phone. Suddenly, your mind is anywhere but in that classroom. Sound familiar?
Two researchers, Evren Sumuer and Duygu Nazire Kasıkcı, went deep inside the problem that we face with every single step and speak little about: how smartphones hijack our learning ability. Their research in *Computers & Education* is not an ordinary research paper but a wake-up call for every student who has ever felt his or her attention slip away.
Key points
- Notifications distract 78% of students, harming focus and learning.
- Distractions lower retention which affects the abilities for absorbing information effectively leading to poor academic performance.
- Recommending disabling alerts, creating phone-free zones, and using smartphones in a conscious way can improve students’ academic performance.
- Smartphones are not the problem—smart use is key. Protect your focus!
What Exactly is Mind-Wandering?
A brief observation to begin with, as regards what this phenomenon is all about: Mind-wandering is a mental drift, the floating away of thoughts from the current task-you can guess what it is-one minute you are listening to a lecture, and the next thing you know, you’re mentally planning your weekend or wondering what your friend just posted on Instagram.
The Study: What Happens Behind the Scenes
The researchers tested 402 university students with an average age of 20.7 years. All these students were smartphone users and brought with them an average of 7.76 years of experience with these digital devices.The study goal was to find out how smartphone addiction affects focus during learning and how smartphones cause mind-wandering. The result showed that about 26% of mind-wandering is connected to smartphone addiction. Additionally, 78% of students get distracted by notifications, 64% of students by social media and 50% by expecting calls. These stats show how much smartphones can disrupt focus and learning.
Why are we tempted to use our phones?
Think about the human brain as a high-performance sports car, with a smartphone as the speed bumps in the road that always disrupt a smooth ride. The scientists isolated something they call „Control Failure x Concern Theory“ Evren Sumuer and Duygu Nazire Kasıkcı describe Control Failure x Concern Theory as how failing to control a behavior and worrying about that failure work together to shape a person’s stress and actions.that describes why: Immediate wanting from an alert. This curiosity defeats the concentration power of an individual. Essentially, it is like being cognitively hijacked with all the possible things that could be in that notification.
Literally, your brain is battling between two impulses:
- Keep the spotlight on learning
- Responsiveness to digital stimulation
And most of the time? The notification wins.
Effects of Distractions and Remedies to Improve Concentration
Distractions during studying and attending lectures have real-life consequences. The very moment attention is being given to other things-for instance, a smartphone-it becomes even harder to retain and recall information. When one loses focus, lessons are not easily comprehended, and over time, such effects will yield poor academic performances.
Some scholars have come up with practical solutions for the digital era, such as switching off notifications while studying to reduce diverting one’s concentration toward less useful activities. One other good approach could be the establishment of phone-free zones, for example, classrooms and libraries, where using smartphones shall not be allowed. Smartphones could be put to more thoughtful use as a means of education in the accessing of apps and resources which enhance learning rather than those which actually take away from it. This also helps fight distraction; it involves one’s complete awareness of the present moment and the realization of the beginning of wandering of one’s mind. By gaining such awareness, the students are then able to deliberately set their focus back onto the work.
Another recommended strategy is using smartphones in a conscious way: ask yourself if its use is supportive in learning or results from mere habit. This helps improve the ability to focus, refreshes the mind, and makes one less prone to distractions while studying. These overall solutions greatly improve retention, understanding, and performance and will keep students on task in an ever-digital world.
A Personal Challenge
Try this next time during studying or even in class: Switch your phone on „Do Not Disturb“ and log the change in your focus. You might be quite surprised by just how much it increases and how big a chunk of mental bandwidth you really get. It is not technology that shall interrupt learning; technology will enhance it. Thus, when we understand how our brains interact with smartphones, we can find better ways of focusing and participating. Keep in mind that your attention is a rare resource. Protect it,
Want to learn more? Check out “The role of smartphones in college students’ mind-wandering during learning” by Evren Sumuer and Duygu Nazire Kasıkcı (2022). doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2022.104616