"May I have your attention?" summary

Watkins starts out by describing a scene where she is sitting in a neighborhood café, she’s settling in, then a group of seventh and eighth graders started filing into the shop. Immediately as some of them sat down she noticed they all pulled out there cell phones and began checking and sending messages. She goes on to describe the situation, “what I was seeing, of course- young people socializing with each other face-to-face and through their mobile phones- is standard fare today.” A study done in 2008, of people ages thirteen to nineteen showed that 45 percent agree with the statement, “Having a cell phone is the key to my social life.” Nowadays technologies are being trickled down to the youngest members of our society and as an unintended consequence of young kids’ adoption of digital media is that “fast entertainment and continuous partial attention (CPA) are invading our nation’s schools.” In order to learn more about the impact these technologies are having in the classroom, Watkins visited schools and spoke with several principals and teachers.

            A growing number of schools allow students to bring their personal media to campus. There were two factors that led to a more open policy about the presence of mobile phones in the U.S.’s classrooms. One factor is that the open policies make known what Everett M. Rogers calls the “diffusion of innovations.” Another factor is the anxiety caused by tragedies such as mass school shootings and the attacks on September 11, 2001. Another important factor was parents. They want their children to be able to communicate with them to coordinate schedules and update their whereabouts. A 2008 study found that mobile phones ranked second only to clothes when it came to determining the social status of teens. New York City’s ban on cell phones policy provoked an intense showdown with the parents of New York City schools children. A lot of teachers are frustrated by the degree to which personal media use in the classroom disrupts learning for everyone in the classroom, not just the student using media. Watkins starts to explain that technology is not only harmful to the classroom but can also enrich the learning environment. She talked to many different teachers who are for technology and says that students not only prefer interactive and online assignments but it helps them do better as well. They learn more from being online.

            This article was written for the general public to inform and educate society on how much technology either helps or hurts the academic learning experience of our school children. Is it even fair to ask kids and teens these days to turn their phones, computers, iPods, etc. off? If you do this, they are basically turning off their lives. As Watkins asks, “Is it even reasonable to expect students to commit their full attention in a classroom setting?” And I believe the answer is no because we have created a culture that in which the ability to pay attention to a single thing for a sustained period of time is simply no longer possible. “Addiction is not the more common challenge in the digital world; the ubiquitous presence of entertainment and the desire for constant gratification are.”