Schools are banning phones. But college students, workers also get pulled off-task by digital devices. Here’s how smartphones can impact anyone’s thinking and learning.
Your coworker or classmate just glazed over in a Zoom meeting or during class. Is he checking his Instagram feed? Predictably, people are easily distracted in this digital age. That’s because our brains are wired to seek information that is novel and exciting.
This trait can both save your life — Lion! — and create serious problems when you need to focus on work, a class lecture or a difficult assignment. Artificial intelligence algorithms built into smartphones play upon this novelty-seeking brain trait, making digital devices potent distractions.
Recent bans of phones in K-12 schools in Ohio and other states seek to minimize the distraction but cannot eliminate its root causes, said Jackie Von Spiegel, interim director of Ohio State’s Dennis Learning Center, where college students are coached to learn more effectively.
“Why are students engaging in these distractions?” von Spiegel said. “We often use our digital distractions in a semi-intentional way, to distract us from any negative emotions that we're having — any boredom or anxiety or frustration. ‘This website is taking milliseconds to load, but it feels like a long time. I'm just going to check my phone because it's frustrating.’”
Students were distracted long before digital innovation. “The boredom isn't going away,” she said. “That's a normal human experience, because we're asking (students) to focus. Yes, we can help them to focus … but also, how to manage it when their brain gets off track, or when they're having those negative emotions, or when they're feeling like ‘I'm missing out.’”
A recent study shows that more adults — 27% of those studied — overuse their phones than do adolescents (22%) and children (15%).
The problem is so pervasive among college students that von Spiegel hopes to set up “structured study halls” at Dennis Learning Center and possibly in some campus libraries.
Students would check devices in to an attendant so they can study free of notifications and attention-luring apps.
Distraction busters
Handling the boredom, anxiety and frustration when phones are locked down and put away might require developing more constructive habits. Here are tips that Ohio State’s Dennis Learning Center recommends to college students — but they are completely teachable to younger students and anyone else who needs to rein in their phone use.
- Engage your hands: Especially for adolescents and people prone to fiddling with phones as a tactile distraction, consider substituting fidgets — stress balls, thinking puddy and rollers — to help occupy the hands while the brain is thinking.
Also “something for (K-12) schools to look into: getting some origami sets,” von Spiegel said.
- Doodling makes a comeback: It’s not just for schoolkids. Because doodling usually doesn’t require using auditory or language centers in the brain, you can still focus on what your lecturer, teacher or coworker (on Zoom) says.
“A lot of people will just make shapes or things that aren't really meaningful. So, you're not engaging the meaning side of your brain” while you doodle, von Spiegel said.
In a 2009 study, participants doodled while listening to a recording about people attending a party. They recalled 29% more names than those who didn’t doodle. “Unlike many dual task situations, doodling while working can be beneficial,” the study found.
- Take notes, but strategically: “Let’s get back to notetaking …” von Spiegel said. “That’s something that high school(s) could train their students to do.”
It’s not about writing every word: Most people get stuck in that rut and won’t adapt to better strategies for taking notes.
“They like what they do, and most of the time it's not good,” von Spiegel said.
People let the information wash over them and take notes on what stands out, she said.
“Usually when you think of notetaking in classes, I'm writing down terms; I'm writing down definitions; I'm writing down examples; or I'm copying down a graph. It's facts, right?” she said.
But strategic notetaking isn’t just about jogging the memory; it can help listeners stay focused, process information and even interact with it.
“When you're taking notes to pay attention, you might write down (your) questions … notes to yourself for later,” von Spiegel said. “‘Look up that diagram on page 42. Ask this question later.’ Have almost an internal dialog with yourself while you're paying attention. That can really help to keep your mind mentally engaged … so you won’t get as bored.”
K-12 teachers can let students keep their notes or check them for credit.
The Dennis Learning Center coaches Ohio State medical students on how to use notetaking to process the deluge of information coming at them.
They’re “getting hit by a truck of information, but it's more like a train, because that train does not stop. The information keeps coming, and you're being knocked down because there's so much of it,” von Spiegel said. “So, you really have to be prepared when you go in there, and you can't be taking notes on the basics anymore.”
She encourages med students and others to use the center’s three-pass system for using notes to learn:
- Take down definitions ahead of time. “You’ve got the book, so, you have the basics,” von Spiegel said. Write those down before class.
- Leave room in your notes for what the professor or teacher has to say. What detailed information will she give? Which examples?
“That's the thing you might want to take notes on,” von Spiegel said. Now your brain can start to make connections: That relates to last week’s lecture, or something I learned in another class.
“And that's the learning part, and that's what we expect college students to do,” she said.
- Finally, review your notes 24 hours later, before you forget them, and then again a week later. This repetition defines neural pathways in the brain, leading to much greater retention and deeper learning.
All the notetaking and doodling leaves less time to get sucked into your smartphone, email or the internet when you think that no one is watching (but they are).