Cellphones are integrated into peoples’ everyday life helping them to calculate, plan, and simplify various things. More essentially, humans developed an addiction to gadgets as they partly play the role of entertainment, showing bright notifications. A great majority cannot stop using mobile phones when studying, working, communicating with friends in “live” conditions. As a result, their concentration decreases, and people stop being fast, efficient, and productive. Texting during class is also a major problem in students’ education. Distractions to phone messages and notifications reduce listening comprehension in class and negatively impact scholars’ academic performance.
As a student, I also use my cellphone during lectures approximately 10% of all the period. I have noticed, switching attention results in gaps in learning and superficial knowledge. Texting influences the first step of the complete listening process described in the HURIER model: hearing development. It is essential to focus entirely on the speaker, stop multitasking and all the possible disruptions to comprehend properly. Texting and using a phone in general influence the atmosphere needed to consume information aurally.
Moreover, I believe, humans’ nervous system does not allow to be efficient while managing several issues at the same time. The reflections are made uniquely to focus on one dominative element. Switching attention to texting, students focus on it primarily, and listening to the professor stays less significant to the brain than should be. According to Xu et al. (2019), multitasking is a myth and has negative effects on performance; however, students still use it as it can coactivate various emotions and induce aversive and appetitive motivational systems. My behavior cooperates with the results of this study as I know that distractions are not enhancing my studying process. Still, some addiction or interest end me with using a cellphone during the lecture or a class.
It was experimentally proved that phone distractions interrupt students from the studying process. Gingerich and Lineweaver (2013) discovered the effects of texting on lecture material comprehension, implementing it in two experiments. The first trial was occupying students with texting whilst reading them a lecture about divided attention. The second one was more selected, telling participants about another aim of the research, so they were less focused on the distracting theme. The results showed weaker knowledge of students occupied with texting comparing to unoccupied ones. Moreover, students texting during the lecture were expecting worse results of their quiz outcomes in both experiments (Gingerich and Lineweaver, 2013). This study shows the negative effect of cellphone distractions on students’ cognitive abilities.
In addition, researchers suggested texting might reduce only the initial step of the learning process, and scholars can compensate for the lack of knowledge by more intensive studying before taking a quiz (Gingerich and Lineweaver, 2013). Most of the students texting in the experiments were underestimating their final results, which can enhance their actual performance. The authors, furthermore, recommended instructors to unite the information about divided attention in the curriculum as it can more effectively convince students about the negative influence on their comprehension (Gingerich and Lineweaver, 2013). This suggestion seems useful as scholars perceiving information in a more friendly way will listen to it more attentively.
The research changed my attitude to texting and listening as it gives a detailed explanation providing outcomes of experiments. With a better understanding now, I will try to refrain from cellphone usage during lectures and classes to enhance my performance, be more productive and efficient. We should refrain from phones when they are not significant as they develop addiction and take a major part of our concentration.