These accidents have resulted in thousands of injuries and fatalities. Part of the reason for this increase in pedestrian deaths is distracted driving. Mobile devices such as smartphones have led to more ways for people to become distracted while they drive. In , 4, people were killed by distracted drivers in the U. As we have previously discussed, California has the highest pedestrian fatality rate in the nation followed by Texas, Florida, and New York.
Los Angeles is especially dangerous for pedestrians with its congested streets. When drivers in Los Angeles are distracted by their smartphones and other electronic devices, they may fail to see pedestrians who are crossing the streets in crosswalks and strike them. Distractions from technology also subtly impact how you solve problems, adapt, and think. For instance, you might check an online resource to read about something that you see on television.
Some research has indicated that these types of searches to find answers to questions can reduce your ability to remember things. The average attention span for humans has also decreased over the past two decades. On average, the attention span lasts just eight seconds today. Distractions have now been able to take over the lives of average Americans. Mobile devices, smartphones, and other types of technology have been designed to distract people by tech companies. Tech companies design their devices to distract people for several reasons.
Technological distractions grab your attention. This means that you might pay more money for a product or might be exposed to additional advertising. This means that the company that designed and manufactured the distracting device will earn more money. Technological distractions also allow people to temporarily escape and to reduce the stress that they fee. This can lead people to continue coming back to the technological distraction for a boost.
Samuel argues that the best way to fight digital distraction is with the strategic use of digital tools. Taken together, their solutions offer a useful primer on how we can begin to tackle this huge and growing challenge. Marco, a year-old manager at an educational app company, used to start every day with his smartphone, checking it and replying to messages before getting out of bed.
At the office he was so distracted by incoming e-mails and texts that he had trouble completing important tasks, and colleagues grumbled about his failure to engage in meetings. Evenings at home were spent on his phone or laptop instead of interacting with his wife and kids. Use behavioral principles to wean yourself from your digital devices.
Consider a study that colleagues and I conducted in and replicated last year. We gave people in three age groups—Baby Boomers, Generation X, and the Net Generation born in the s —a list of 66 pairs of activities to find out which ones they typically did in tandem.
So, yes, you can walk and chew gum simultaneously. But check e-mail while participating in a conference call? Look at your Facebook feed and still do meaningful work?
Researchers have demonstrated that the mere presence of a phone makes people less productive and less trusting, and that students who are interrupted while studying take longer to learn the material and feel more stressed. Gloria Mark, of the University of California, Irvine, has shown that workers typically attend to a task for about three minutes before switching to something else usually an electronic communication and that it takes about 20 minutes to return to the previous task.
Why are we allowing ourselves to be so debilitated by technological distractions? Some people refer to the overuse of digital devices as an addiction.
More accurate are terms such as FOMO fear of missing out , FOBO fear of being offline , and nomophobia fear of being out of mobile phone contact —all forms of anxiety that border on obsession or compulsion. People are constantly checking their laptops, tablets, and phones because they worry about receiving new information after everyone else, responding too slowly to a text or an e-mail, or being late to comment on or like a social media post.
Numerous studies support this diagnosis of the problem. My colleague Nancy Cheever brought students into a lecture hall, asked them to sit without talking, doing work, or using their phones, and then assessed their anxiety over the next hour. Although light smartphone users showed no change, moderate users experienced initial alarm that leveled off, and those accustomed to checking their phones all day long felt their anxiety spike immediately and continue to increase.
How do we calm the anxiety and thereby avoid the distraction? When I speak to students, parents, teachers, and business leaders, I recommend three strategies—all of which involve turning away from technology at times to regain focus.
First, use behavioral principles to wean yourself from your digital devices. Allow yourself to check all modes of e-communication, but then shut everything down and silence your phone.
Set an alarm for 15 minutes, and when it rings give yourself one minute for a tech check-in. Repeat this process until you are comfortable increasing your off-grid time to an hour or several hours.
Even a minute walk in nature is enough to have a calming effect. You might also listen to music, look at art, exercise, or meditate. Finally, keep technology out of your bedroom.
The National Sleep Foundation NSF and Mayo Clinic have noted that the use of blue-light-emitting LED devices is detrimental to your sleep—a critical period that cements what you learned during the day, while removing useless information and the toxic byproducts of daily neuronal activities. The aim is to block the release of neurotransmitters that energize your brain and instead promote the production of melatonin, which allows you to rest.
I persuaded Marco to periodically disconnect and, when using technology, take recharging breaks. In one survey at six different universities, college students reported using their phones an average of 11 times per day in class. Recently, a faculty member asked us for advice about policies regarding mobile devices in class. Indeed, this is a hot topic on our campus and at universities across the country.
We were able to point him to a number of studies examining mobile devices in the college classroom. Not surprisingly, the evidence suggests that cell phones generally are a distraction for students. Broadly, we are not wired to multitask well e.
Mayer and Moreno , and using cell phones during class is no exception. Several studies have compared students who texted during a lecture versus those who did not. Those who texted frequently took lower quality notes, retained less information, and did worse on tests about the material e. What is worse is that mobile device usage is distracting to neighboring students.
In several surveys , students have reported that texting is distracting to nearby students. A study on laptops in a simulated classroom found that students in the vicinity of another student who was multitasking on a laptop during class scored worse on a test than those who were not near multitaskers.
While cell phone screens are smaller—and thus perhaps less distracting—than a laptop, one could reasonably expect that a similar phenomenon of distraction applies to cell phones. On the other hand, smart phones and other mobile devices can be used for positive purposes in the classroom. For example, instructors might choose to employ a variety of applications, including Poll Everywhere and Learning Catalytics , which can be accessed by mobile devices.
These applications encourage class participation and provide instructors with instantaneous feedback about student learning. Whether laptops should be allowed in the classroom may be a bit more nuanced, as some students prefer to take notes on their computer. However, the temptation for distraction is large.
Fried found that most students using a computer in class spend considerable time on activities not related to taking notes, and furthermore identified a negative correlation between student success in class and in-class laptop use. Additionally, as mentioned above, neighboring students are easily distracted when a student on a computer strays from the immediate task at hand.
Should instructors explicitly prohibit students from using mobile devices in class? Professors are worried about students who multitask during lecture and rightfully so. In the article cited below " The Laptop and the Lecture ," students who spend more time on task tend to do better on the tests for that class.
Why are students off task? What should professors and teaching fellows do to avoid making problematic assumptions about students' abilities or mental health? The Effects of Multitasking on Learning Environments.
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