Korea is strict. In most public schools, you have to hand in your cell phone to the homeroom teacher. Your cellphone is not returned to you until the end of the day. However, if you are reading this article now, you have now reached the freedom of college life. But dear students, freedom from strict rules does not mean a freedom from responsibility.

　Oh, did your Kakao just bing alerting you that your friend has sent you a message?

　I guess, I will just have to wait….

　Did you reply yet? Is your attention back to the article? It's a shame that I can't be more interesting than a "밥 먹었어" message from whoever it was that just messaged you.

　Next time, I do hope you might fight the urge to check your cellphone, but even more so when you're in class.

　Firstly, smartphones interfere with the learning process and also incur the side effect of rudeness. For example, a notification pops up tempting a student. He or she checks and replies to a message and it does not escape the attention of the teacher. This one message turns into a texting conversation and the instructor is now forced to ask the student to stop. Not only is this rather inconsiderate to the professor who is now fighting for your attention, but this also distracts the teacher and other students in the class. This hypothetical situation is not hard to imagine-as it happens to me on a daily basis (naughty freshmen)-and according to Cengage's survey, "72% of instructors said that smartphone use does distract students from learning.…Instructors can see when students appear disengaged, and they know how it effects their teaching process as well; 46% say that students' smartphone use distracts them while they're teaching."

　Perhaps, at this point, you say, your smartphone is just on the desk on silent. There are no pings or buzzes to distract you; and this very well may be the case. How-ever, a study published by The British Psychological Society found that even the mere presence of your smartphone causes you to divert your attention. This study asked strangers to converse with each other for ten minutes. Half were allowed to have their smartphones on the table and the other half had a notebook. Those who had their cellphones in sight reported feeling like they had made less of a connection with the person they had just been talking to. Therefore, whether you are conscious of it or not, you are not connecting to the lesson being taught if your cellphone is in front of you.

　Smartphones decrease focus too. Options and information overwhelm students with easier access to instant gratification and this makes it hard for the brain to stay focused. In fact, Microsoft published a study, which found, that due to a digitized lifestyle-one that includes instant gratification from the swipe of a finger-the average human attention span has decreased from 12 seconds in   2000 to 8 seconds in 2015. This 4-second drop cannot be wholly attributed to cellphone use. However, as published by Deloitte, those between the ages of 18 and 24 look at their phones on average 74 times a day. And for students, a digitized lifestyle is dominated by smartphones. The many options and instant gratification facilitated by smartphones have reduced human attention span. Unfortunately, studying and learning cannot be done in 8 seconds or less or 12 for that matter. Students cannot just flip a screen and obtain an answer. It takes time to solve a math problem, to write an essay, to research and to read a chapter in a book. These kinds of tasks require focus and delayed gratification. Additionally, along with shortened attention span, smartphones also make refocusing difficult. Piers Steel at the University of Calgary found that it takes an average of 25 minutes to refocus on the original task at hand after sending a text message.

　 (To be continued)

　 Prof. Tara Beck