I was sitting in class and there it was: the vibration I had been anticipating all day. My cell phone had alerted me that my mom had text me. I couldn’t ignore her, so I try to secretly pull my phone out and reply. Then, as soon as I hit send, my teacher looked at me and asked if I agreed with her statement. I was too busy texting to hear what she said, so I tried to play it off and say that I agreed, but she already knew what I had done. She sent me straight to the principal’s office – this wasn’t my first time being caught – and that was it. I know I’m not the only one who has had this happen to them, but I learned a valuable lesson. Electronic devices are distracting to students in a classroom environment because the students are trying …show more content…
Daniel J. Levitin, director of the Laboratory for Music, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University, compares multitasking to a seesaw in the brain (par. 4). Levitin goes on to say that the brain in constantly switching back and forth between the task-positive network, when all of a person’s attention is put onto a specific task, and the task-negative network, when a person isn’t focused and is daydreaming (par. 4). This can become strenuous on the brain and make a person feel as if they have too much going on (par. 4). Faria Sana et al., authors for Computers and Education, state that multitasking is a part of our everyday lives (par. 1). In addition, Marc E. Weksler and Babette B. Weksler, experts at the Department of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Center, state that people believe that multitasking is more successful than it really is (385). Weksler and Weksler go on to explain that studies suggest that almost all people try to do more than one thing at a time, but at the price of jeopardizing their performances on each task at hand (386). One example of a person who tries to multitask is a student. Often, students try to do more than one task at a time, like text and listen to their teacher, but students are not learning when they try to multitask while using electronic devices in the classroom. Students should learn to stay focused in class …show more content…
Kouider Mokhtari et al., PhD and authors in the Journal of College Reading and Learning, state that not as much time and distractions on class work might be due to the amount of technology students are attached to (166). Ellis et al. research found that during a business accounting class, students who text during class don’t do as well as the students who keep their phones put away (qtd. in Mokhtari et al. 166). Bowman et al. discovered that in a general psychology class, students took 22 - 59% longer to read an article online while texting compared to those who didn’t text and read (qtd. in Mokhtari et al. 166-7). McCoy found that students pay less attention in class because they send and receive texts (qtd. in Mokhtari et al. 167). Mokhtari et al. research shows that while students were reading for fun, 72.35% of the students talked on their phone or text at some point in time, and 54.59% felt as if they were distracted from their reading (Mokhtari et al. 169-70). This shows that students feel as if they are being distracted, even when they are reading for fun. Mokhtari et al. research then goes on to show that while students were reading for a class, 66% of the students talked on their phone or texted and read at the same time at some point in their reading (Mokhtari et al. 171). This shows that most students use their phone while reading for a class, and