New Distractions During Class

DISTRACTIONS DURING CLASS

Teachers fight for students’ attention while social media increases its strain on students’ education.

Story by Maura Langland

When you walk into a classroom students should be doing any number of things. They could be working on homework, taking notes, but more often than not they are on social media. Over the past few years, teachers have noticed social media becoming an increasing distraction for students during class.

Between Snapchat, Instagram, Tiktok, and BeReal, these app’s algorithms are enticing students to spend more time scrolling through their feeds.

Science teacher Wendy Haas ponders whether students spending time on social media affects productivity in classrooms.

“There are days when I feel that social media has very little impact on what we’ve been able to accomplish as a class, and days where I get dismayed by the amount of distraction,” Haas said.

Haas believes that this increase in social media use could be a potential effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. For nearly two years, students were taught online and had more reliance on their devices.

“It became people’s lifeline to the outside world during lockdown and during remote and hybrid school,” Haas said. “We’re all still retraining ourselves [on] how to be around a bunch of people again.”

According to Haas, the abrupt transition from fully online school, to hybrid learning, to in-person school, has left students dependent on social media.

Even during ECT it can be difficult to focus on work instead of looking at your phone and seeing what’s new on Snapchat, Instagram etc. Here, senior Sam Girard is on his phone but is still maintaining a fine line of what work there is to do and what is finished. Photo by Keat Hockenbury

DISTRACTIONS DURING CLASS

“The pandemic totally changed reliance on phones,” Haas said. “I used to have just a few kids who struggled with controlling phone use, now I have a lot more.” The increase in social media has forced teachers to adapt their teaching to cater towards students’ attention spans. Students using their phones in class is not a new concept for teachers, but has become a larger factor.

Ceramics teacher Bryan Lloyd finds that social media has become a much bigger issue during class in recent years.

“Social media is the main [distractor] from students focusing in class because there’s always notifications that go off and they feel like they have to get to it right away,” Lloyd said.

As new apps emerge and algorithms strengthen, social media addictions continue to be a constant battle with educators.

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