Tablets can make students easily distracted

The argument

With a seemingly unlimited access to apps, videos, games, and websites, tablets can easily prevent students from focusing on their work. A 2012 U.S. study by Pew Research Center found that 87% of 2,462 surveyed middle and high school teachers claim “today’s digital technologies are creating an easily distracted generation with short attention spans.” Many students struggle to multitask while using technology; thus, tablets can prevent students from concentrating on a single assignment or task. Their short attention spans combined with distracting graphics and sounds can lead to a decrease in productivity and interest in schoolwork. Various studies have also analyzed the effect of gadgets on students' grades. For example, according to a 2016 U.S. study whose findings were published in the School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative at MIT, "students in the sections that allowed some form of device use [for a computer-based exam] scored 18 percent of a standard deviation lower than students in the section where devices were banned." Students should solely use tablets for non-educational tasks after studying to avoid any distractions during their study time. Limiting tablet usage or rescinding it altogether can lead to an increase in focus, productivity, and overall success.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Although tablets give students access to a countless number of websites, apps, games, etc., they also encourage students to improve their focus and multitasking. Being able to focus and multitask for long periods of time can prove useful to students in their daily life, as well as in the future if they decide to pursue higher education or a career. Also, if students are aware of numerous potential distractions but manage to stay focused on productive while using a tablet, they can feel more accomplished and successful, which could motivate and inspire them in their studies.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] What a tablet makes possible is not what it does in a managed classroom, and the premise ignores the mechanisms schools actually use — device management, restricted profiles, offline modes, network filtering. It also compares a general-purpose consumer device against a book rather than against a device configured for schoolwork. [Rejecting P2] This reports teachers' beliefs about a generation rather than a measurement of anything, and the question asked concerns digital technology as a whole rather than tablets replacing textbooks. Perceptions of attention spans are weak ground for the claim, and the survey is now well over a decade old. [Rejecting P3] This is the argument's only real evidence and it does not fit the conclusion. The study concerned laptops and tablets during university lectures, where the alternative was handwriting notes, not schools substituting screens for textbooks, and an effect of 18 per cent of a standard deviation is small. Nothing in it touches the reasons usually given for the change — cost, weight, currency of material, search, and accessibility features for disabled students — which the argument would have to weigh against the distraction it identifies.