Students who like to text and email friends during lectures should take note

Students do better long-term without devices distracting them, a study found.

French lawmakers this week passed a law to ban the use of smartphones in schools, toughening a previous law that prohibited the use of smartphones in during class. Starting in September, the new law applies to students between the ages of 3 and 15 years of age.

Schools with students who are 15 years and older will have an option to adopt the ban. “Our main role is to protect children and adolescents,” French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer told French TV, citing previous studies on young people becoming addicted to technology.

Critics argue that banning smartphones from schools entirely could present problems for students, who may need them to contact their parents or other guardians for emergencies during school hours. Educators say there are still good reasons not to have phones while studying.

In addition to the prevalence of online bullying and people losing sleep due to smartphone addiction, the presence of phones can make learning harder. Using devices in class can impact students’ grades, according to a new study from Rutgers University.

What happened: Researchers studied 118 cognitive psychology students during one term to see if students who had access to personal devices including phones, laptops and tablets would perform worse on exams, given previous research found that dividing your attention makes tasks harder.

The students attended class in two “sections,” back to back, and had the same instructor. During those classes, they took a quiz on what they had just learned. In half of the sessions, they were not allowed to have any electronic devices available for personal use.

What they found: Students who had personal devices performed about the same as those who didn’t in end-of-class quizzes. But when students had to answer questions about those lessons on a final exam at the end of the semester, they did worse than those who had no devices during class.

They scored 5% less on exams, equal to half a letter grade. What’s worse, the personal devices even affected students who weren’t actually using them, the study found, as they were often surrounded by classmates who were texting or emailing friends.

“The instructor often noticed two students giggling as they together viewed an image on a laptop,” they wrote. “It seemed that such behavior would be distracting to individuals around them.” Bottom line: Long-term retention “is being compromised,” the researchers said.

Other takeaways: Smartphones can erode concentration at work too. Previous studies show that people check their phone every 15 minutes or less and, as soon as they check in it will take upwards of 20 minutes to return to the task they were working on.

Between answering personal emails and texts, online shopping, and watching sports, employees report spending 42 minutes per day on other personal tasks. This adds up to 8 hours a week, and $15.5 billion in lost productivity, according to a 2017 study from staffing firm OfficeTeam.

Written by Maria LaMagna for MarketWatch ~ August 1, 2018

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