Many students know what it is like to sit in a lecture and struggle to concentrate for more than a few minutes on end, missing out on important content and having to self-study the material on your own or checking your phone only for ten minutes to have suddenly passed. A recent poll on PDBY’s Instagram page revealed that 84% of UP students feel the constant need to check their phones during lectures. A common explanation that older generations love to give is that our generation has had our attention spans destroyed by the likes of social media, and their best advice is telling us that we simply need to put our phones aside. But the issue may be more complicated than that.
While it is true that studies have shown a small decrease in attention span due to the presence of phones in lectures, the issue lies more in the fact that switching between devices and multitasking worsens our ability to retain the information we hear. Instead of focusing deeply on our lectures, our brains become accustomed to rapid bursts of stimulation from social media platforms or apps.
Another reason technology has impacted our ability to concentrate in lectures is sleep. After all, many of us have fallen victim to scrolling before bed and only going to sleep an hour after we originally planned to. This lack of sleep affects our attention span, our ability to retain information, our mood, and our motivation to study.
Based on what has been mentioned above, it is tempting to simply agree with the idea that social media and certain devices should be discouraged or even banned. However, this is both an oversimplification of the problem and not taking practicality into consideration. The reason social media disrupts students’ ability to listen in lectures and go to sleep on time is simple: it is addictive.
Social media platforms are designed to flood our brains with frequent dopamine hits, making our brains accustomed to constant stimulation and leading to things like lectures seeming dull and draining. Like any addiction, it is not possible for the majority of students to simply cut out social media use. A better alternative for universities would be to adapt to the new wiring of younger minds and change the teaching methods into something more engaging.
To a certain extent, the university has already started doing this by incorporating clicker questions into lectures, which forces students to actively participate instead of passively listening. Another way to ensure that lectures are more engaging is by allowing for short discussion breaks during lectures where students can talk through the work covered among themselves. Lecturers can even add exam-style questions into the lecture and give the students a few minutes to solve them before continuing. It can also benefit the students if lecturers ensure that the majority of the class understands each concept before moving on. One of the major factors that explain why students do not listen in lectures is because they do not understand the concepts enough to keep up and therefore turn to their phones instead.
It is definitely true that social media has impacted our ability to concentrate and retain information from lectures. It is also true that it is each student’s own responsibility to manage their screen time habits and ensure that they are keeping up with the lecturer. But if universities truly want to help their students, they need to adapt as well and see social media use for what it is: something students have become addicted to and something that is not going away anytime soon.
Visual: Mila Jordaan
