Most students say that their homework always takes forever, even if they have short assignments, and that the same homework they do in fifteen minutes at school takes one hour at home. This is because of small distractions that interrupt your focus. If their doing a worksheet and suddenly they get a text, their brain gets distracted. This disruption of focus causes students to take way more time on their homework.
Levi Calderon (‘29) is a freshman at Green Hope who shared that he often gets distracted by his phone while doing homework, explaining, “Usually when I’m doing my homework I try my best to do one subject’s work and then take a break so I don’t lose focus.” He shared that although his strategy with taking breaks after each subject is good he says that “If I get a text while im doing my homework I would look at the text and then after replying to the text my focus is kind of gone.”
Beyond Booksmart is a website dedicated to providing one-on-one Executive Function coaching for children and adults. They wrote in their article, Distracted by Technology: Focusing Attention on Homework, “Today, it’s a bit more complicated as students and their smart phones are inseparable. What might at first glance seem harmless, doing homework or studying while constantly texting or toggling between Spotify and TikTok can actually impair learning the material as well as lower test scores.” They also talk about how getting distracted in the middle of doing homework makes the process way longer. For example, if a person is doing their math homework and they get distracted while they are in the middle of a formula, even though they come back, they won’t be able to finish the problem as quickly.
The same article states that In a study conducted by Dr. Larry Rosen, Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the Psychology Department at California State University – Dominguez Hills, observed students during a 15-minute homework session. The results were that students only stayed on task for 65% of the time. Dr. Rosen said, “They were frequently distracted by digital temptations, even when they knew they were being watched.”
Dr. Rosen did another study with high school students about how often they switch from studying to doing something related to technology. The results of this study were that “Across all grade levels, 80% of students reported that they switch between studying and technology somewhat often to very often.” Rosen calls this Continuous Partial Attention, where students aren’t focused on studying but rather moving their attention back and forth. The overall conclusion they came to was that “Students who were less distracted had higher GPAs than students who switched back and forth fairly often and those who regularly check Reddit, Instagram, or text messages.”
Sarvesh Rekha Vishnu (‘29) is another freshman who goes to Green Hope. Vishnu said that he thinks using your phone while doing homework is a complete distraction, explaining, “If I’m studying for a test and then I go on my phone for some time, when I get back to studying, I would probably forget what I studied until now.” His overall conclusion is actually very similar to the Beyond Booksmart: “I would much rather concentrate for one hour and finish my homework and then be on my phone for 30 minutes than use my phone while doing my homework and take three hours to finish the work.”
It is reported that homework will take two to three times longer if students have their phones nearby, or even have social media apps open. The important rule the article tells people to remember is that no one can multitask well, especially when dealing with distractions.
