Getting Distracted?
How Technology is Impacting Focus
Technology is a powerful tool in our lives. It makes so many aspects of our daily lives easier. For example, you can use an app to order food, get a ride to work or school, get someone to fix your house, look at restaurant reviews, get driving directions, etc, etc. In schools, students now truly have the world in their hands and can find information quickly. With the increasing access to information from various sources, education has moved from knowledge acquisition to skills based instruction as students need tools to sort through their increasingly complex world.
There are many consequences to spending more time using technology and being online. In this post, I will discuss the negative impact technology has on students' ability to focus.
Instant Gratification:
With education apps and the increasing use of screens, students have "been trained by our technology that learning takes place in short, quick bursts with sweet, stimulating rewards" (Marcovitz). Students expect learning to be engaging and need to see the immediate impact. However, as much as this has a negative impact on attention span, the "guess and test" philosophy can help students to become critical thinkers (Marcovitz).
Skim and Scan:
Reading online instead of reading longer passages, adapts the brain to a skim and scan response. This type of reading is efficient in our fast-paced world but does not help to develop imagination (Taylor). Further, "studies have shown that reading uninterrupted text results in faster completion and better understanding, recall, and learning than those who read text filled with hyperlinks and ads" (Taylor). Students now get most of their research information online instead of reading books.
Multitasking
With the busyness of the world today, it is essential that people can multitask. This forces us to regularly split our focus. Increasingly, our brain adapts and learns to function this way which makes it more difficult to focus on one thing at a time (Marcovitz). The ability to multitask is a useful tool. However, at times, students need the ability to focus on one thing.
So is technology shortening students' attention spans? Probably, yes. However, we can adapt the way we teach and learn to meet the needs of youth. Educators should deliver larger order thinking problems that give students the "freedom, creativity, and ability to problem solve while using that technology on a daily basis" (Son).
Marcovitz, D. "Is educational technology shortening student attention spans?" Learning & Leading
with Technology, Aug. 2008, p. 8+. Academic OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A194279658/AONE?
u=ko_acd_uoo&sid=AONE&xid=70e65cca. Accessed 7 June 2019.
Son, J. "Is Educational Technology Shorterning Student Attention Spans?" Learning & Leading with
Technology, Aug. 2008, p. 8+. Academic OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A194279659/AONE?
u=koacd_uoo&sid=AONE&xid=d62ee297. Accessed 7 June 2019.
Taylor, J. (n.d.). How Technology Is Changing the Way Children Think and Focus. Retrieved from
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-power-prime/201212/how-technology-is-
changing-the-way-children-think-and-focus
Williams, J. (2018, May 27). Technology is driving us to distraction. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/27/world-distraction-demands-new-f
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