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Smartphones are facing scrutiny in classrooms from K-12 to college. Some teachers prohibit cell phones inside the classroom because their alerts, text messages, and social media updates are a distraction to the students. Other teachers allow them because students need easy access to information, assignments and calendars. Are smartphones interfering with academic productivity and learning?
While students are clicking on messages and checking out images of their friends, these interactions on their smartphones often trigger anxiety, and FoMo (fear of missing out) when they see that their friends are engaged in exciting activities while they’re stuck in a classroom or their bedrooms. Although the students may physically be in the classroom or at their desks doing homework, they are not engaged. That’s why it takes an inordinate amount of time for students to get their assignments done each day.
Having instantaneous contact with virtually all friends also creates a heightened and possibly overwhelming influx of information. This doesn’t give students the downtime they need to contemplate much of what they’re trying to process because they are receiving constant information. When it comes time to prepare for midterms or final exams, many students complain that they don’t remember concepts that they learned earlier in the year. This makes it difficult for them develop collective knowledge (long-term