Today, teachers must teach students how to learn and what to ignore
Our most productive citizens and employees today are those who locate pertinent information efficiently, ignore irrelevant information consistently and avoid undue distraction. They are media literate digital citizens. It is a particular challenge for all of us to become media literate though, especially in our now hyper-connected world that can overwhelm rather than clarify. We need instruction. It is more important than ever for our teachers and our schools to play an increasingly important role in preparing our students for this new form of digital citizenship
Everyone who has access to the internet has experienced information overload. And the amount of time we spend accessing information online is only increasing. Information overload is amplified by things like email and social media, the 24-hour news cycle and the rise of music and video streaming. It's compounded by the ubiquity of wifi and smartphones. Even when we are not using our devices, we make sure to keep them close enough to us physically so that they can interrupt us at all hours.
Surprisingly, citizens are less concerned with information overload. Pew research discovered that, since 2006, fewer people have reported that information overload is a problem for them (from 27% in 2006 to 20% in 2016). Naively, 66% of Americans think that "having more information at their disposals actually helps to simplify their lives."
If we are using information to simplify our lives, we should be able to acquire relevant information quickly. But we're using our devices to consume information for longer. Common Sense Media reports that teenagers spend 8:56 a day "consuming media" (6:40 on screens). Similarly, if we are using information to simplify our lives, then multitasking should be declining. That's not the case either. The Distracted Mind found that teenagers multitask for 31% of their day.
Spending 8:56 hours a day consuming media can't be conducive to meaningful learning, nor can 31% of a day be spent multitasking productively. Research has shown that more time online increases fatigue and stress. More specifically, increased time on social media negatively impacts well-being. And every study on multitasking concludes that it decreases productivity. One study concluded that IQ can drop as many as 15 points while multitasking.
Schools are the venue in which we educate and train our future citizens and employees. In order to succeed, our graduates need to know how to access pertinent information quickly, without distraction. We need to teach a new skill--how to ignore irrelevant information and how to single-task. But we are not, and what we are doing now is only compounding the problem. We are adding multiple classes worth of information to the pile of information our students already consume on a daily basis. We are assigning several assignments per night (sometimes multiple assignments per class, per night). We are assigning these tasks in a number of different mediums from textbooks, to the internet, to learning management systems, to pencil and paper. And we are demanding students access email and add spaces online where they get and submit information. These conditions are driving our teenagers to spend hours a day online and to multitask. And anxiety and stress have skyrocketed as a result.
I'm not arguing that school should stop asking students to complete the tasks mentioned above. The process of going to school and completing assignments should force students to access relevant information and complete tasks efficiently. But in today's hyperconnected world, students need explicit instruction and training on how to complete their work efficiently and effectively. We can't assume they learn this on their own. For example, when teachers assign research papers, it's implied that students will have to choose what information to include and what to exclude. Currently, instruction for assignments like this (one that many students only complete once a year) focuses on locating information rather than ignoring irrelevant information. Similarly, when administrators get involved in our students' online lives, it is invariably because something went wrong, leading to reactive disciplinary action rather than proactive instruction.
